THE LAW OF LOVE AND THE LAW OF VIOLENE

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THE LAW OF LOVE

AND
THE LAW OF VIOLENCE

LEO TOLSTOY

THE LAW OF LOVE

AND THE

LAW OF VIOLENCE

TRANSLATED BY

MARY KOUTOUZOW TOLSTOY

RUDOLPH FIELD

Publisher
NEW YORK

Copyright 1948, by
MARY KOUTOUZOW TOLSTOY

THE LAW OF LOVE

and
THE LAW OF VIOLENCE

NOTE

The work of Count Leo Tolstoy entitled: "The
Law o Love and the Law of Violence/ 5 has never
been published in Russia; and consequently was not
translated into English with the rest of his works. A
Russian author, M. Halperine-Kaminsky, trans
lated it into French from the manuscript and pub
lished it in France.

Shortly after its publication Paul Bourget's
drama, "La Barricade," was produced in Paris. This
play, based on the idea of inter-class warfare, was
the subject of much controversy. It was even sup
posed that, in answer, Tolstoy wrote this treatise
with its theory of the "Law of Love* 3 as opposed to

6 Note

the "Right of Violence" proclaimed by the French
master and his friends; but this supposition was
erroneous, for the book was published first.

M. Halperine-Kaminsky sent Count Tolstoy
criticisms of the play from the pens of such well-
known writers as Rene Dounic and M. de Mun, and
received the following reply:

MY DEAR HALPERINE-KAMINSKY:

Thank you very much for the articles on "The Bar
ricade." I read the most interesting ones at once.

Yes, it is a very significant phenomenon, and I should
like to give you my opinion on this subject. But I have so
little strength left, and so short a time to live, and so
much work on hand, that I doubt if I shall entirely
realize my desire.

For the moment, what struck me most in the debates
caused by Mr. Bourget's play is their astonishing mixture
of profound erudition, great intelligence, extraordinary
elegance of language, and subtle courtesy towards the
adversary; but also the most brutal egotism, concerned
only with personal and class interest, and absolute ignor
ance of religious and moral principles, even those that
are indispensable to our lives, and without which man
descends to the level of the beasts; in spite of the inven
tion of marvellous flying machines, or of the wonderful
perfection of the artists of the Theatre Frangais, of the
Vaudeville, etc.

I am particularly surprised that men like M. Bourget
and his friends can still speak so seriously of Catholicism
in France in 1910, after Voltaire, Rousseau, and many

Note 7

other thinkers. Nothing proves more clearly how mis
guided these men have been; not as to their intelligence,
but as to their reasoning; not their polish, brilliancy, but
their morality. In this conflict it is evident that f<ws les
moyens sont bom. 1

We know well, they say, that Catholicism is the most

vulgar, the most absurd, and the most stupifying of lies,

and that it has long since been denounced and stripped

bare; but it serves our purposes: let us make use of it ...

My best wishes,

LEO TOLSTOY

It is interesting to see what Tolstoi thought of
the state of the world just before the Great War,
In spite of his apparent pessimism, he was as hopeful
as Mr. H. G. Wells for the future condition of man
kind. But in his sweeping denunciation of legisla
tors, judges, and all sorts of authorities, he went far
beyond the English writer, who says: "Our state
could have grown up in no other way. We had to
have these general dealers in human relationship,
politicians and lawyers, as a necessary stage in
political and social advancement. Just as we had to
have soldiers and policemen to save people from
mutual violence." 2

1 All means are justifiable. In French in the original text.

2 Men Like Gods, P. 283.

PREFACE
88

The light is come into the world, and men loved
the darkness rather than the light; for their works
were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the
light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works
should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth
cometh to the light, that his works may be made
manifest, that they have been wrought in God.

(John, iii, 19-21.)

The worst thing of all is when man begins to
fear the truth lest it denounce him.

(Blaise Pascal.)

The glory of the good is in their conscience and
not in the mouths of men. 1

The only reason why I am writing this is because,
knowing the one means of salvation for Christian
humanity, from its physical suffering as well as from
the moral corruption in which it is sunk, I, who am
on the edge of the grave, cannot be silent.

All thinking people must admit that the present

* The epigraphs placed at the beginning of the chapters, and not signed,
arc quotations from Tolstoy's works, made by the author himself. (Note
of the translator.)

8

Preface 9

life of Christian nations will deteriorate more and
more if we cannot make up our minds to modify
it. The misery of the disinherited and the luxury
of the rich increase each day; the struggle of all
against all: revolutionaries against governments,
governments against revolutionaries, oppressed na
tions against their oppressors, state against state,
the West against the East, is becoming ever more
bitter.

Many are aware of this; unfortunately they very
rarely see the cause of the lamentable situation, and
still less the means of remedying it. They give all
sorts of reasons for it, and propose numerous
remedies, but not the right one.

The cause of the unhappy situation of Christian
humanity is the lack of a superior conception of life
and a rule of conduct in accordance with it, a rule
held in common by all people professing Chris
tianity.

The cure for this situation, a cure neither fan
tastic nor artificial, but natural, can be found in
the practical observance of the conception of life
revealed to humanity nineteen centuries ago, and
which answers to-day to the intellectual and moral
development of humanity; that is to say, the Chris
tian Doctrine in its true sense.

THE LAW OF LOVE
AND THE LAW OF VIOLENCE

One of the most vulgar of superstitions is that
of the wise men who believe that one can live
without faith.

(Daily Reading, 2nd Part, Introduction.) 1

True religion consists in establishing the relation
of each of us towards the infinite life that sur
rounds us, the life that unites us to the infinite,
and guides us in all our acts.

(Daily Reading, 2nd Part, 1, 2.)

If you feel that you no longer have faith, know
that you are in the most dangerous situation in
which a man can find himself on earth.

1 The work entitled Daily Reading, from which many epigraphs are
taken, was written by Tolstoy with quotations from his own writings, and
from those of great writers of all countries and all times.

10

The Law of Violence 11

Men live in a reasonable way and on good terms
with each other when they are united by the same
conception of life; that is to say, by a religion that
satisfies all of them alike and gives them the
same rule of conduct. But when it happens that the
conception of life, modified by moral and intel
lectual progress, becomes more precise and exacts
a new rule of conduct, while men continue to fol
low the former one, their lives become unhappy
and they no longer live in harmony.

The evil is aggravated more and more as men
continue to ignore the new religious conception
and its consequent rule of conduct, and when they
observe the law imposed by the antiquated rule.
Instead of admitting the religious conception cor
responding to the phase of their development, they
form a conception that justifies their way of living,
but does not correspond to the moral needs of the
majority.

This phenomenon has been repeated on several
occasions in the history of humanity; but never, I
believe, has the discord, between the various peoples
and the religious conception that they have adopted
been so great: indeed, they continue to live a pagan
life.

In my opinion this discord is so marked because
the Christian conception of life, at the moment of
its formation, goes far beyond the moral and intel-

12 The Law of Love

lectual state of the nations who acknowledged
it at that time. That is why the rule of conduct
which it indicated was too greatly opposed not only
to individual habits but even to the whole social
organization of pagans, who became Christians in
name only.

Thus it is that these nations have become attached
to a false Christianity, represented by the Church,
whose principles differ from those of paganism only
by a lack of sincerity. For that very reason faith
in the Christian doctrines disappeared little by little
without being replaced by any other. That is why
the Christian world finds itself in its present
condition: the majority of its adherents possess
no explanation of the meaning of life, that is to say,
no religion and no common rule of conduct.

The working masses, even though they out
wardly profess the religion of the Church, do not
believe in it, do not practice it in their daily lives,
and follow its traditions by habit, by convention.
As for the so-called cultivated classes, they either
believe positively in nothing at all, or rather they
pretend to believe in the Christianity of the Church
for political reasons; or else a small minority believe
sincerely in the Christian doctrines, contrary to
the life it leads, and seeks to justify its belief by all
sorts of insidious sophisms.

There is only one reason for the unhappy condi-

The Law of Violence 13

tion in which Christianity now finds itself.

It is still more complicated by the fact that be
cause of its long duration, some of the leaders who
profit by this unbelief, pretend to believe what
they do not believe at all; others, the more intel
lectual, who are the most corrupt, openly preach
the futility for men of our time of such a concep
tion of life, or faith, and the rides of conduct that
result from it; they try to make them believe that
the only fundamental law of human life is the
struggle for existence, guided by our passions or
our natural needs.

The regrettable cause of all our misery is, there
fore, this unconscious lack of faith of the masses
and the conscious ignoring of the necessity for
religion by the so-called cultivated classes.

II

Men has an Irrestible tendency to believe that
no one sees him when he himself does not see: like
children who close their eyes so that no one may
see them,

(Lichtenberg.)

Men of our time believe that all the insanity
and cruelty of our lives, the enormous wealth of a
few, the envious poverty of the majority, the wars
and every form of violence, are perceived by
nobody, and that nothing prevents us from con
tinuing to live thus.

Error continues, nevertheless, to be error, even
when it is accepted by the majority.

(Daily Reading, 6-ix, 7, 8, and the conclusion.)

Having accepted the Christian doctrine in the
form corrupted by the Church, the pagans, satis
fied at first with the new doctrine, withdrew little
by little from the Christianity of the" Church, and
ended by living without any religious conception of
life and the rules of conduct resulting from it,

As the majority of men are unable to live without
a common rule of conduct, life, as I have said,

14

The Law of Violence

gradually becomes unhappier. It will not be able
to continue to exist in its present form.

Farm laborers, dispossessed of the land, and con
sequently of the possibility of enjoying the fruit of
their labor, hate the landed proprietors and capital
ists who enslave them. The proprietors and the
capitalists, knowing the sentiments they inspire in
the workers, distrust them, doubt them, and seek
to keep them in submission by the organized force
of government. Thus it is that the situation of
the workers is continually aggravated and their
dependence upon the rich increases; while the
wealth of the rich, their power over the workers,
their fear and their hate, continues to increase.

This is equally the cause of the progressive in
crease of armaments of nation against nation; of
the expense caused by employing workmen for
military preparation on land, on sea, and in the
air; preparations having international carnage as
an only end. And these murders are committed
because all Christian people (not individuals, but
people united in states), hate each other and are
ready at any moment to hurl themselves at each
other.

Thus it is that each great power, by observing
antiquated patriotic traditions, oppress one or
several groups of nations and force them to par
ticipate in the life of the dominating nations that

1 6 The Law of Love

they hate, for example: Austria, Prussia, England,
Russia, France, oppress Poland, Ireland, India, Fin
land, the Caucasus, Algeria, etc. This is the way
that, apart from the hatred of the poor and the
rich, and of independent states, the hatred of op
pressed nations for their oppressors is developing
and spreading.

The worst is that all these hatreds, so contrary to
human nature, are not condemned as bad senti
ments, but, on the contrary, are exalted, and raised
to the pinnacle of virtues.

The hatred of the oppressed workers for the rich
is praised in the same degree as love of liberty,
fraternity, equality. The hatred of Germans for
French, English for Americans, Russians for Jap
anese, and vice versa, is considered a patriotic
virtue. The hatred of Poles for Russians and Prus
sians, Prussians and Russians for Poles and Finns,
is even more intense.

But the plagues to which I have drawn attention
are not sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility
of continuing our present mode of life.

If our world possessed a rule of religious conduct,
we could look upon the evils that inflict it as tem
porary, occasional phenomena. In reality, the
religion which we see professed is a mendacious one.
There are even several, Catholic, Orthodox, Prot
estant, etc., etc. and all are in a state of permanent

The Law of Violence 17

hostility. There exists also a false science, equally
divided, whose denominations quarrel with each
other. There are political and international lies of
different parties; lies of art, lies of tradition and
habit, lies of all sorts, but no rule of moral conduct
imposed by a religious conception.

The men of the Christian world also lead the
existence of beasts, and take their selfish interests
for guides and are in a state of perpetual struggle
among themselves. What distinguishes them from
the beasts are the latter 's constant need of food and
claws for defense; while men pass with dizzy haste
from roads to railroads, from animal locomotion to
steam, from the spoken word and manuscripts to
printing, to the telegraph, the telephone; from
sailing vessels to transatlantic liners, from steel arms
to cannon, machine guns, bombs, and aeroplanes.
It is this overwrought life we lead that is getting
madder and madder, unhappier and unhappier,
because men, instead of keeping to a spiritual,
moral principle that would unite them in a society
of peace and concord, are guided by their bestial
instincts which they seek to satisfy by trading on
their intellectual faculties.

Ill

But whoso shall cause one of these little ones
that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for
him that a great millstone should be hanged about
his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth
of the sea.

(Matthew, xviii, 6, 7.)

One cannot struggle against the calls of con-
sciencer these calls come from God; that is why
it is preferable to answer them at once.

(Daily Reading, October 23rd.)

The evil committed by man not only weakens
his soul and deprives him of true happiness, but
the more often falls back on the one who com
mits it.

To do wrong is as dangerous as to provoke a
wild beast.

More frequently than not evil falls back on the
one who has committed it.

(Daily Reading, June 6th.)

The majority of the men of our time, perceiving
the constant increase, of their misfortunes, employ
the only means of salvation that, according to their

18

The Law of Violence 19

conception of life, they consider rational: the op
pression of part by the rest.

Those who see that their interest lies in the main
tenance of the present state defend it with the force
that the Church puts at their command: those who
wish to change the order of existing things also
have recourse to violence in order to replace the
former state by a new one that they think better.

The number of revolutionaries and counter re
volutionaries in the Christian world cannot be
counted. However, if the social forms are modified,
the base remains the same. The domination of a
few over the majority, corruption, lies, the fear of
the oppressed, servitude, anger and the brutalizing
of the masses, all these things remain as they were,
and even spread and develop.

What is going on now in Russia, in particular,
gives evidential proof of the futility and harm of
using violence as a means of uniting men.

The incidents, so frequent a short time ago, of
highway robbery, assassination of policemen, of
ficers, detectives, attacks on high functionaries, are
becoming rarer every day, while death sentences
and executions are increasing.

For the past two years they have not stopped
shooting and hanging people, and those executed
can be counted by thousands. Thousands also were
killed by revolutionary bombs, But since the num-

20 The Law of Love

ber of those killed by the leaders o the state is
incomparably greater than those killed by revolu
tionaries, the former triumph and believe that they
have conquered. They do not doubt that they will
be able to continue their usual existence of main
taining lies by violence, and violence by lies.

The mistake of all political doctrines, from the
most conservative to the most advanced, which has
brought men to their present lamentable condition,
is the same: to keep men in society by the aid of
violence so as to make them accept the present
social organization and the rule of conduct that it
imposes.

Certainly, it is possible to push a man forcibly
in the direction that he refuses to take. It is thus
that animals, as well as men led by passion, act.
It is natural and comprehensible. But how shall one
understand the reasoning by which violence is a
means of inviting men to do everything we wish
them to do?

Constraint always consists in forcing others, by
threats of suffering or death, to do what they
refuse to do. That is why they act against their
own wishes as long as they consider themselves
weaker than their oppressors. From the moment
that they feel themselves stronger, they will not
only cease to obey, but, irritated by the struggle
and by all that they have suffered, they will first

The Law of Violence 21

gain their liberty, and tlien in their turn they will
impose their .will upon those who disagree with
them. So it should be quite evident that the straggle
between oppressors and oppressed, far from con
stituting a means of social organization, leads to
disorder and general disagreement.

It is so certain that it would be superfluous to
speak of it if the lie, according to which violence is
a means of reunion, had not been implanted for
so long a time, and was not admitted by tacit con
sent to be an indisputable truth, as much by those
who profit by it as the majority of those who
are victims of violence.

This lie existed before the Christian era, and has
since survived in all its strength. The only difference
between former times and our own is that then
the non-sense of violence as a means of grouping
was hidden from men, while to-day the truth of
Christ, according to which violence is a means of
disunion, stands out more and more clearly. The
moment that men understand it they will no longer
be able to endure violence without revolting
against it.

This is observed to-day among the oppressed in
every country.

Not only the oppressed are beginning to per
ceive this truth; the oppressors, in their turn, are
aware of it. They are no longer certain of acting

22 The Law of Love

well and justly when they use violence towards the
weak. Accustomed to their reciprocal situations,
the leaders and the led are seeking to persuade each
other by arguments mostly false, that brute force
is necessary and useful, but they feel already deep
within themselves that their acts of cruelty, instead
of gaining, draw them further away from the
desired end.

IV

When, among a hundred men one man domin
ates ninety-nine, it is iniquity, it is despotism;
when ten dominate ninety, it is injustice; it is
oligarchy; when fifty-one dominate forty-nine
(and this only theoretically, for, in reality, among
these fifty-one there are ten or twelve masters),
then it is justice, then it is liberty.

Could one imagine anything more ridiculous,
more absurd, then this reasoning? However, this
is the very one that serves as a basic principle for
every one who extolls better social conditions.

All the nations in the world are restless. An
active force that seems to be preparing the way
for a cataclysm is felt everywhere. Man has never
assumed so great a responsibility. Each moment
brings care that becomes more and more absorbing.
One has the impression that something great is
going to be accomplished. But on the eve of the
appearance of Christ the world was then, also,
expecting great events; yet it did not welcome
Him when He came. In the same way the world
might feel the birth pangs before His next coming
and go on failing to understand what Is hap
pening.

(Lucie Malaury. Daily Reading,

June 30th.)
23

24 The Law of Love

And be not afraid of them that kill the body,
but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear
him who is able to destroy both soul and body in
Hell.

(Matthew, x, 28.)

The States of the Christian world have not only
reached, but in our day have passed the limits
towards which the states of ancient times were
approaching before their dismemberment. We can
see by this fact that each step that we make to-day
towards material progress not only does not ad
vance us towards the general well-being, but shows
us, on the contrary, that all these technical improve
ments increase our miseries. Submarines, subter
ranean and aerial machines may be invented for
transporting men with the rapidity of lightning;
the means of propagating speech and human
thought may be multiplied ad infinitum; but it
would still remain a fact that the travellers, who are
so comfortably and rapidly transported are neither
willing nor able to commit anything but evil, and
their thoughts and words can only incite men to
evil. As to the perfected arms of destruction, which,
while diminishing the risk of those who employ
them, make carnage easier, they give evidential
proof of the impossibility of persevering in the
same direction.

Thus, the horror of the situation of the Chris-

The Law of Violence 25

tian world appears under a double aspect: the
absence of a moral principle of union and a gradual
lowering of man to a degree below that of animals,
in spite of all his intellectual progress and, above
all, the -complexity of the lies that hide our miser
able condition and our cruelty.

The lies cover the cruelty, the cruelty causes the
spreading of the lies, and both increase like snow
balls.

But everything must come to an end. And I
consider that a crisis in this unfortunate condition
is approaching.

The Christian world must inevitably get to the
end of this horrible situation, and it must as inevi
tably get out of it. The evils, resulting from the lack
of a religious conception corresponding to our
epoch, are the inevitable condition of progress.
They should also disappear as inevitably after the
adoption of a religious principle that would cor
respond to our epoch.

V

From the day when the first members of coun
cils placed exterior authority higher than interior,
that is to say, recognized the decisions of men
united in councils as more important and more
sacred than reason and conscience; on that day
began the lies that caused the loss of millions of
human beings and which continue their unhappy
work to the present day.

In 1682 the English doctor Laitan, an honorable
man, having written a book against the bishopric,
was judged and condemned to the following
punishment: he was cruelly whipped, one ear was
cut off, his nose was split, and the initials of the
words Trouble Maker were marked on one cheek
with a hot iron* Seven days later he was again
whipped, although the wounds of his former
punishment were not yet healed; the other side of
his nose was split, his other ear cut off, and his
other cheek marked. All this was done in the name
of Christian charity.

(Maurice Davidson,)

Christ founded no church, established no State,
made no laws, imposed no government or exterior

26

_^ The Law of Violence 27

authority; he simply set himself to write the law
of God in the hearts of men in order that they
might govern themselves.

(Herbert Newton.)

The special characteristic of the situation in
which the Christian world finds itself to-day is that
its social organization is founded on the doctrine
that, in its true acceptance, is ruining the existing
state of things; and that this acceptance, hidden
until now, is beginning to appear.

One might compare this organization to a house
built, not even on sand, but on ice. That is why its
foundation is melting, and the house is beginning
to fall to pieces.

As long as the majority of the faithful, deceived
by the Church, have only a rudimentary idea of the
doctrine of Christ, and in the place of former
fetiches adore Christ-God, his mother, the saints,
the relics; as long as they believe in miracles, in the
Holy Sacrament, in the Redemption, in the infal
libility of the princes of the Church, the pagan
organization of life can keep going and give every
satisfaction to the believers. They also accept the
meaning of life that the Church gives them and
the rule of conduct that results from it. And this
faith, too, concurs in the union of men.

Unhappily for the faith imposed by the Church,
there exist the Scriptures, that the Church itself has

28 The Law of Love

recognized as holy. In spite of the efforts of the
ecclesiastics to hide the true meaning of the evan
gelistic doctrine from the laity; in spite of having
forbidden the Scriptures to be translated into the;
language of the people; in spite of its false inter
pretations, nothing can hide the light that filters
through the lies of the Church, and illuminates the
souls of those whose eyes are opening more and
more to the truth.

In proportion as education has spread, as print
ing has replaced writing, the Scriptures have become
more accessible. Men cannot help but perceive
the striking contradiction between the order of
existing things upheld by the Church, and the
evangelistic doctrine that it acknowledges as being
holy. Read and understood as it is, the Scriptures
appear to be a frank and explicit denial of both the
State and the Church.

In becoming more and more evident, this con
tradiction resulted in the loss of the faith imposed
by the Church, and it is only by tradition, pro
priety, or fear that the majority of men continue
to practice the outer forms of the Catholic, Or
thodox or Protestant cults but without believing
in the inner truths of this religion.

I do not mention here the little communities that
reject the ecclesiastic doctrines entirely and which
profess their own doctrine, approaching more or

The Law of Violence 29

less to the true Christian teaching; the number of
their adherents are too few in comparison with the
enormous quantity of men who are becoming more
and more devoid of any religious sentiment,
If the popular masses still practice the official cult
outwardly, the upper classes, perceiving with still
more precision the contradictions contained in the
Church doctrine, turn away from it entirely; but
they cannot adopt the true doctrine of Christ, since
this is in opposition to the existing state and would
ruin the privileges they enjoy.

It follows that the immense majority of the
Christian world practice the forms of the Church
simply by interest, propriety, or fear, while the
minority not only do not acknowledge the existing
religion, but still further, influenced by what is
called science, consider all religions as vestiges of
superstition, and act only under the impulse of their
instincts.

The nations who had accepted the Christian
doctrine at the time when this doctrine was superior
to their moral development, will fall into a state
of complete irreligion, and their moral level will
descend lower than that of nations who profess
much inferior, and even quite vulgar beliefs.

VI

The corruption of Christianity takes us further
away from the establishment of the Kingdom of
God on earth; but Christian truth, like fires that
smoulder in dry wood, has consumed its covering
and broken forth. The meaning of Christianity
has already been revealed to every one, and its
action is becoming greater than the veil that
covers it.

I see a new religion, founded on confidence in
man, calling upon the unspoiled sentiments that
are lying asleep in us, believing that we can love
good for itself without any idea of recompense
and that the divine principle is in us.

(Solter.)

What we require, what is necessary for the
people, what our time needs for us to be raised
from the mud of egotism in which we are plunged,
is faith, thanks to it our souls will stop wan
dering in pursuit of selfish ends and will be able to
march in unison by acknowledging one origin,
one law, one end. Every firm belief that rises from
the ruins of former religions modifies the order of
existing things, for all strong beliefs accompany
every branch of human activity.

30

The Law of Violence 31

Humanity repeats in two different formulas
and in different degrees the words of the prayer:
"Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven."

(Mazzini.)

One can neither weigh nor measure the evil
that false religion has caused and is still causing.

Religion is the establishment of the relation
that exists between man, God and the universe,
and the definition of man's mission that results
from it. How miserable our lives would be if this
relation and this definition were false.

It is not sufficient to throw away the false
religion, that is to say, the false relation of man as
regards the universe; we must still establish the
true.

(Daily Reading) September 19th.)

The fact that one part of the pagan world ac
cepted a religious doctrine, whiph, far from being
at the highest moral level of the society of that
time, sapped the bases of the social state, is rather
tragic, but at the same time constitutes the most
fortunate event that could happen to nations pro
fessing the Christian religion.

Presented to pagans in an unnatural form, this
doctrine appeared to them as a simple attenuation of
their vulgar conception of the Divinity, as a higher
idea of the mission of man and his moral needs. But

32 The Law of Lave

the real significance of the doctrine was so hidden
from them by dogmas and practices of their cults,
that they did not even suspect it. All this in spite
of the precise teaching of Christ in the Scriptures,
which is acknowleged as a divine revelation by the
Church.

Happily this doctrine corresponds so well with
the spiritual nature of man, that in spite of the
mass of dogmas under which it is buried, those who
have greater intuition of the truth see through its
real meaning and realize how it contradicts the
order of existing things.

The fathers of the ancient church: Tatien, Clem
ent, Origen, Tertullian, Lactance and others, had
already realized this contradiction. It was the same
in the Middle Ages. It was revealed with particular
force in modern times. And its recognition is shown
by the appearance of a great number of religious
sects, which reject the government that is contrary
to the Christian doctrine condemning violence.

It was equally recognized by the humanitarian
doctrines that claim to have nothing in common
with Christianity, and which are really nothing else
than partial manifestations of the Christian con
science; such are the socialist, communist and an
archist doctrines.

The cause of the sufferings of Christian nations
is thus the theoretical acceptance of a doctrine,

The Law of Violence 33

which when applied, should inevitably abolish the
order of things to which these nations are accus
tomed and which they do not wish to renounce.

Their great good fortune is having admitted
Christianity, which, even when false, includes the
truth. In fact, these nations to-day are brought to
the necessity of recognizing the true meaning of
the doctrine, which alone is able to save men from
their present hopeless condition.

VII

The principal cause of our bad social organiza
tion is false belief.

We ought to pay great attention to our public
affairs; we should be ready to modify our opinions,
to renounce our former ones, and to thoroughly
understand the new. We should cast off our prej
udices and should reason with an entirely free
mind. The sailor who keeps the sail set in the same
direction in spite of the changing of the wind will
never reach port.

(Henry George.)

It is only necessary to adopt frankly the doc
trine of Christ in order to perceive at once the
horrible lie in which each and every one of us is
living.

(Daily Reading, January.)

The Christian doctrine, the real significance of
which we are grasping more and more, teaches that
man's mission is to manifest ever better and better
the Rule of all; and it is love that proves the pres
ence of this Rule in us. That is why the highest
law that should guide us is love.

34

The Law of Violence 35

All the ancient religions recognize that love is
the essential condition for a happy existence. The
sages of Egypt, the Brahmans, the Stoics, the Bud
dhists, etc. declared the principal virtues to be
kindness, pity, compassion, and charity; in one
word, love in all its forms. The highest of these
doctrines, especially those of Buddha and of Tao-
Tse, went as far as recommending love to every
human being, and for people to return good for evil.

However, none of them placed this virtue as a
supreme law that should be the only motive of our
acts. This was the distinctive trait of the most
recent religion, that of Christ. All previous doc
trines proclaimed the love of one's neighbor as one
of the virtues; the doctrine of Christ is based on the
metaphysical principle of love, the supreme law,
that should guide us in our daily life and which
admits of no exception.

Christ's teaching should not be considered as
entirely new, standing out distinctly from former
beliefs, it is only the clearer and more precise
expression of the principle that previous religions
divined and taught instinctively. Thus it is that
instead of love being merely one of the virtues, as
it was for them, Christianity has made it a supreme
law, giving man an absolute rule of conduct. The
Christian doctrine explains why this law is the
highest, and indicates as well the acts that man

36 The Law of Love

should or should not commit after having acknowl
edged the truth of this teaching. It follows, with
great clearness and precision, that the observance
of the supreme law, and because it is supreme,
should not admit of any exception as the previous
doctrines admitted and that love is love, when it
is given in the same degree to other nations, other
religions, and even to the enemies who hate us and
do us harm.

That is the progress made by the Christian doc
trines, and there lies its principal virtue.

The explanation of why this commandment is
the supreme law of life is given with special clear
ness in the Epistles of John:

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for
God is love. No man hath beheld God at any time: if we
love one another God abideth in us, and his love is per
fected in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love
abideth in God, and God abideth in him.

"We know that we have passed out of death into life,
because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth
in death."

(The First Epistle of John, iv, 7, 8, 12, 16; Hi, 14.)

According to this doctrine our ego, our life, is
the divine principle limited by our body, and which

The Law of Violence 37

manifests itself in us by love; it is why the true life
of each of us is the manifestation of love.

How we should interpret this conception of
the law of love in our acts, has been indicated to
us in the Scriptures on numerous occasions, and
with special clearness and precision in the fourth
commandment of the Sermon on the Mount.

"Ye have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth (Exodus, 21, 14) : but I say unto you,
Resist not him that is evil."

(Matthew, v, 38.)

Foreseeing, no doubt, the exceptions that would
appear inevitable when the law of love is applied,
the verses 39 and 40 of the same chapter state
clearly that no circumstances whatever should arise
that could permit any deviation from the strict
commandment of love: Do not do unto others
what you would not have them do unto you.

And it is said: "Whosoever smiteth thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man would
go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also/*

In other words, this means that violence directed
against you does not justify the use of violence by
you.

The same condemnation of our breaking the law

38 The Laiv of Love

of love, when we feel justified by the attitude of
others, is even more clearly indicated in the last
commandment of the Sermon on the Mount:

"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shall love thy
neighbor, and hate thine enemy: (Lev. xix, 17, 18.) but
I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that
persecute you; that ye may be sons of your father who is
in Heaven; for he maketh his son to rise on the evil and
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust. For if
ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not
even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your breth
ren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the
publicans the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect."

(Matthew v, 43-48.)

And it is this law of love and its recognition as a
rule of conduct in all our relations with friends,
enemies, offenders, etc. which inevitably brings
about the complete transformation of the existing
order of things, and does this not only among
Christian nations, but among all the populations of
the globe.

And this is also the essential difference between
the Christian doctrine in its true conception and
previous religions; this is the progress that has been
accomplished in the universal conscience.

The previous religious and moral doctrines that
acknowledged the benefit of love in human life

The Law of Violence

admitted, however, certain circumstances in which
the realization of this law cannot be obligatory.
Also, as soon as it ceases to be a changeless law, its
beneficence disappears and the doctrine of love is
reduced to fruitless teaching, not modifying in any
way the mode of living that is founded on violence.
On the other hand, the true Christian doctrine,
making of the law of love a rule without exceptions,
in the same way abolishes the possibility of any
violence, and cannot, in consequence, help but
condemn every state founded on violence.

It is just this signification of Christianity that
was hidden from men by false Christianity, because
the latter acknowledges love not as a higher law,
but, with the example of previous doctrines, only
as one of the rules of conduct, useful for observance
when circumstances do not prevent.

VIII

The disasters caused by wars and military pre
parations not only surpass in horror the motives
that provoke them, and by which one seeks to
justify them, but these motives themselves are
often ignored by the victims of the war.

(Daily Reading, June 17th.)

Men are so accustomed to see order maintained
by the aid of force, that they cannot imagine a
social organization without restraint.

The organizers of a reign of justice founded on
violence should know what justice is and should
be just themselves. And if some can know what
is just, and be just, why should other men not
know, and why should not they, as well, be just?
(Daily Reading, August 14th.)

If men were absolutely virtuous, they would
never move an inch from the truth.

The truth is harmful to the one who does evil.
Whoever does good, loves truth.

(Daily Reading, August 29th.)

Reason is frequently the slave of sin; it strives
to justify it.

(Daily Reading, August 29th.)

40

The Law of Violence 41

I am often astonished to see men defend certain
strange maxims, whether religious, political or
scientific. Seek and you will find what is necessary
to defend your position.

(Daily Reading, May 27th.)

The true Christian doctrine consists only in the
recognition of love as the supreme law of life, not
admitting, consequently, of any exception. This
means that the pretended Christian doctrine which
does admit of exceptions, such as the possibility of
the use of violence in the enforcement of laws, is a
contradiction as obvious as cold fire, or warm ice.

It seems natural that if the possibility is once
admitted that men may torture or kill their fellow
beings in the name of humanity, others may claim
the same right to torture and kill in the name of
some ideal of the future. The admission of a single
case contrary to the law of love destroys all its
beneficent characteristics, although it is the basis of
all religious or moral doctrines. This seems so self-
evident that one hesitates to be obliged to prove it;
nevertheless, the believers or the nonbelievers of
the Christian world, the latter acknowledge the
moral law look upon the doctrine of love con
demning violence as fantastic and inapplicable to
life.

We can see that governments insist that good
order cannot be maintained without violence,

42 The Law of Love

really meaning by the word "order" the mainte
nance of a government that permits a minority to
profit as much as it likes by the work of the
majority. We can see why they say it, for the sup
pression of violence would take away their means
of continuing their present existence and would
denounce its iniquity of long standing.

This ought not to be the case for the mass of
workers who employ violence on each other and
who suffer from it so cruelly. The situation of the
oppressed should not be compared to the constraint
used directly by the stronger on the weaker, or by a
greater number on a smaller. Here, indeed, it is the
minority who oppress the majority, thanks to a lie
established ages ago by clever people, in virtue of
which men despoil each other, for insignificant
profits, of much greater advantages such as liberty
and are exposed to painful suffering.

The origin of this lie was discovered four cen
turies ago by the French writer La Boetie, in his
work, Voluntary Slavery. He said:

"It is not bands of horsemen, it is not companies
of infantry, or is it arms that defend the tyrant;
but, true as it is, it will not at first be believed, there
are always four or five who control the tyrant, four
or five who hold the country in servitude for him.
There are always five or six who have access to the
tyrant, and who have offered themselves, or are

The Law of Violence

called upon by him, to be accomplices of his
cruelty, the companions of his pleasures, pandors to
his lust, and sharers in his pillage. These six train
their chief so well that he must be wicked not only
as the result of his own brutality, but of theirs,
also. These six have six hundred who profit
under them, and they act towards them as the six
act towards the tyrant. These six hundred have
under them six thousand whom they have raised in
degree, to whom they have given, even if indirectly,
the government of provinces or the handling of
taxes, that they may control their avarice and
cruelty. They perform their duties when it seems
good to them, and also do so much evil, that they
could not exist except under protection, nor be
dispensed with, except by means of law and punish
ment.

"Great are the consequences that result from
this. And any one who looked closer into this net
would be interested in seeing that not only the six
thousand, but hundreds of thousands, millions, hold
the tyrant by this cord, helping themselves by
means of it. The way, in Homer, Jupiter boasts
that if he pulls a chain he will draw all the gods to
him. From this came the rise of the senate, the
establishment of new states, the election of offices;
not certainly to reform justice, but to keep the
tyrant in power.

44 The Law of Love

"To sum up, we owe our present condition to
the favors, to the gains and advantages that one
acquires together with the tyrants, who find as
many people to whom tyranny seems profitable, as
those to whom liberty would be agreeable. If
physicians say there is something the matter with
one part of our body, although the rest is quite
well, they come at once to the infected part. In the
same way, as soon as a king is declared a tyrant, all
the wicked, all the dregs of the kingdom (I do not
say a lot of robbers and cheats who can do neither
evil nor good in a republic, but those who are filled
with ardent ambition and extraordinary avarice) ,
gather around him and uphold him in order to
share in the booty and to be petty tyrants under
the great tyrant.

"Thus act the great thieves and the famous cor
sairs; some discover countries, others rob travellers;
some are in ambush, others lie in wait; some assas
sinate, others despoil; and even here there are
degrees, and while some are only servants, others
are the chiefs of the group, although one and all
share in the booty, or at least in the search for it.
They say that the Sicilian pirates assembled in such
great numbers that Pompey the Great had to be
sent against them; but they allied themselves with
several splendid cities and towns, in whose harbors
they could hide with great security when they

The Law of Violence 45

returned from their raids; and for recompense they
allowed these towns a certain percentage of their
pillage.

"Thus the tyrant enslaved his subjects, some by
the help of others, and was protected by those from
whom, if they were worth nothing, he should him
self have been protected; but, as one says, to cut
wood, one must have wedges of the same kind of
wood: there are the archers, there is the guard,
there are the halberders. Not that they do not
suffer occasionally on his account: but these lost
sheep, these people abandoned by God and man, are
content to endure evil in order to commit it in
their turn, not on those who inflict it on them, but
on those who suffer from it like themselves, and
who are unable to commit it."

It would seem that the workers, not gaining any
advantage from the restraint that is exercised on
them, should at last realize the lie in which they
are living and free themselves in the simplest and
easiest way: by abstaining from taking part in the
violence that is only possible with their co-opera
tion.

It would be so simple and so natural to make
the agricultural laborers, who are in the majority
in Russia and other countries, understand that for
centuries they have been suffering by their own
fault and without any advantage: that the ex-

46 The Law of Love

elusive possession of the land is assured by those
who do not work it themselves, guards, police
agents, soldiers; that all the taxes are imposed
by them, inasmuch as they are employed by the
exchequer; and, when they have at last understood,
to get them to say to those they consider as chiefs:

"Leave us alone. If you, emperors, generals,
judges, bishops, professors and other learned men,
if you have need of armies, navies, universities,
corps de ballet, ecclesiastic courts, conservatories
of music, prisons, gallows, guillotines, prepare
them all yourselves; tax yourselves, judge your
selves, imprison and execute each other, exter
minate yourselves, get yourselves killed in war; but
leave us alone, for we have no need of all these
things and we do not wish to participate in acts
that are futile as far as we are concerned, and
above all, so wicked."

Nothing should be more natural than that the
working class should thus express itself. But part of
them, the majority, continue their existence of
martyrs in the police service, in financial offices,
in the regiments; others, the minority, in trying to
free themselves from oppression by revolt and by,
in their turn, committing violence on those who
oppress them; or, in other words, in trying to
quench fire by fire and thus increasing the violence
from which they are suffering.

The Law of Violence 47

Why do men act so irrationally?

It is because the long duration of the lie has
caused them to lose all notion of the bond that
exists between their servitude and their participa
tion in violence.

Why do they not see this bond?

Because they no longer have faith; and without
faith, men are guided only by interest. In fact, he
who is guided by interest alone cannot do otherwise
than deceive or be deceived.

The result is a surprising phenomenon: the masses
of the working class, the great majority, not
only continue to support violence, but even main
tain it, contrary to common sense, and to their
evident interest; in spite of very frequent denun
ciations of the iniquity from which they are suffer
ing; in spite of revolutions for the purpose of
suppressing violence by violence.

All these workers continue, by habit, either to
profess the false Christian doctrine taught by the
Church, or to deny all religion, but they believe in
the bottom of their hearts in the ancient law of
"a tooth for a tooth/' submitting to the detested
government, or else seeking to destroy it by violence.

Part of them are powerless to change their situa
tion because, believing in the necessity of the
present social organization, they cannot refrain

48 The Law of Love

from participating in its violence; the rest, whose
religion has been replaced by political doctrines,
cannot free themselves from violence, because they
are forced to suppress it by violence of another sort.

IX

The savage instinct of military murder has been
so carefully cultivated for thousands of years, that
it has become deeply rooted in the human brain.
It is to be hoped, however, that a better humanity
will be able to free itself from this horrible crime.
But what will this better humanity think of the
so-called refined civilization of which we are so
proud? The same that we think of the ancient
inhabitants of Mexico and of their cannibalism*
people warlike, pious and bestial at the same time.

(Letourneau,)

War will disappear only when men shall take

no part whatever in violence and shall be ready

to suffer every persecution that their abstention

will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.

(Anatole France. Daily Reading,

December 29th*)

Ask the majority of Christians what they con
sider the greatest evil from which Christ freed
humanity, and they will answer: from Hell, ever
lasting fire, and punishment in the next world.
And according to this idea, they believe that our
salvation may be obtained thanks to the interven
tion of others. The word Hell, which is seen so

49

50 The Law of Love

seldom In the Scriptures, has done much harm to
Christianity on account of false interpretation.
Men flee from an external Hell, when in reality
they carry within themselves the Hell that they
should fear the most. The salvation that they
need, that frees them, is the liberation of their
souls from the evil that is concealed within them.

Much worse than external punishment is the
soul in a state of rebellion against God, is the soul
endowed with divine force and abandoning itself
to bestial passions; is the soul living in the sight
of God and fearing the anger of men, preferring
glory in men's eyes to the peaceful realization of
his virtue. There is no greater disaster than that.

It is this that impenitent man carries with him
to his grave.

To gain salvation in the highest interpretation,
of this word, is to lift up the weary spirit, cure
the suffering soul, give it back its liberty of
thought, of conscience, of love. In doing this one
finds the salvation for which Christ died; it is for
this salvation that the Holy Ghost was given to
us, it is towards this salvation that the true Chris
tian doctrine is discovering the right road.

(Channing.)

It seems so easy to tell the truth; yet it takes
a great deal of effort within ourselves to attain
this virtue.

A man's degree of veracity indicates the degree
of his moral perfection.

(Daily Reading, September 19th,)

The Law of Violence 51

The condition of the Christian world indicated
in the preceding chapter, as well as that of the rest
of the inhabitants of the earth, remains the same
as has been described. But I believe that the
moment has come, for Russians above all, and for
the moujiks in particular, to see at last where lie
the means of salvation.

I believe that the Russians are summoned first to
this task because they are less civilized than the
other nations; that is to say, less corrupt intel
lectually, and they have kept a vague, but pro
found understanding of the Christian religion;
they are summoned to-day precisely because they
have just gone through an irregular, lamentable
revolution and a repression horrible in its extra
ordinary insolent and stupid cruelty*

The means of salvation of which I am speaking
has been foreseen by men for a long time, but it is
only lately that they are becoming conscious of it
and are beginning to apply it.

A military court is sitting in a Russian town.
The judges are seated before a table; on this table
are the mirror of justice, surmounted by the two
headed imperial eagle and carrying an inscription
on its base; law books and sheets of paper with
underlined headings.

Among the judges, in the place of honor, is seated
a stout man in uniform, with a cross at his collar;

J2 The Law of Love

he seems rather intelligent, good-natured, also, even
tenderhearted because he has lunched well, and has
received comforting news about his youngest son's
health. At his side is another officer, of German
origin, who is displeased at having been appointed,
and is going over in his head the terms of the report
that he is about to address to his chief. The third
place is occupied by a very young officer, smart,
good-humored, still thinking of the epigram that
he ventured to make while lunching at the colonel's,
and which amused the guests so much. He is still
smiling about it. He is frantically anxious to smoke,
and is impatiently awaiting the end of th'e sitting.

At a short distance the registrar is sitting in front
of a small table. He is absorbed in the arrangement
of a bundle of papers, among which he will choose
the documents to be asked for presently at the first
injunction.

Two young people, one a peasant from the gov
ernment of Panza, the other a merchant in a small
way from the town of Lubin, are both dressed as
troopers. A third is brought in, dressed like the
others and quite young.

This young man is very pale. He casts a rapid
glance at the court, then his eyes take on a vague
expression. He has passed three years in prison for
having refused to take the oath for military service.
In order to get rid of him, after three years of

The Law of Violence 53

prison, he has been offered an opportunity to swear
allegiance, after which he could be set at liberty as
having served three years, although he passed them
in prison. But he has again refused, declaring, as he
did the first time, that he was a Christian, that he
could not possibly swear an oath of allegiance, or
become a murderer.

The registrar reads a paper called the act of
accusation. It is noted that the young man has
refused to touch the pay and considers that military
service is a sin.

The president good-naturedly asks the accused if
he is guilty.

"Everything that has been read is exact: I acted
and spoke like that, but I do not consider myself
guilty," answers the young man in a voice trem
bling with emotion.

The president nods his head in assent, as if the
reply was what he expected it to be; he consults a
paper and asks:

"What do you say in explanation of your con
duct?"

"I have refused and I still refuse because I con
sider military service a sin ... contrary to the
teaching of Christ."

The president, satisfied, nods again in approval:
everything is in order.

"Have you anything to add ? "

54 The Law of Love

The young man explains with trembling lips
that it is written in the Scriptures that murder is
forbidden, and not only murder, even any hostile
feeling towards one's neighbor.

The president keeps on approving. The German
officer frowns; the young officer, head and eye
brows raised, becomes attentive as if he were hear
ing something new and interesting.

The accused, becoming more and more agitated,
says that the oath is positively forbidden, and that
he would consider himself guilty if had consented
to serve, that he was again ready . . .

This time the president stops him, finding that
the accused is digressing and making futile remarks.

The witnesses are called: the colonel of the
regiment and the sergeant. The colonel is the
president's usual partner at cards and is a past
master in that exercise. The sergeant is a Pole
belonging to the minor nobility, clever, handsome,
and a great reader of fiction.

Then in comes the priest, rather elderly. He has
just left his daughter, son-in-law and grandchil
dren, who have come to visit him, and he is still
under the influence of a quarrel with his wife on
account of a carpet that he has given his daughter,
against her express wish.

"Father, please swear in the witnesses, and tell
them the sin they will commit against God by not

The Law of Violence

telling all the truth," says the president, addressing
the priest.

The latter puts on his vestment, takes the cross
and the Bible, then pronounces the usual exhorta
tion.

The colonel is the first to take the oath; raising
rapidly two very clean fingers, so well known to
the president, he repeats after the priest the for
mula of the oath, and kisses the cross and Bible
noisily, as if the act gave him pleasure.

Then it is the turn of the Catholic priest to
swear in the young sergeant just as quickly.

The judges, grave and calm, wait. The young
officer, who had gone out for a minute to take a few
puffs of a cigarette, comes back during the deposi
tion of the witnesses. The latter testify, confirming
what the accused has said. The president nods
approvingly.

After this an officer placed at a certain distance
from the judges gets up; the speaker for the
defense. He approaches the desk, takes up the
papers lying there, and begins to speak in a loud
voice, setting forth in lengthy periods everything
that the young man has done, which the judges
know already, and which the accused has just ad
mitted, without trying to minimize his crime, but
rather aggravating it.

The accuser announces that, according to the

56 The Law of Love

young man's own declaration, he does not belong
to any sect, that his parents are orthodox, and that,
to begin with, his refusal to serve was only unwill
ingness. This obstinacy, not only of the accused,
but of others like him, obliged the government to
take the severest measures against them, applicable
as well in the present case.

Then it is the turn of the defender, whose speech
seems to have little connection with the affair.

Then every one goes out, comes back, causes the
accused to come back, and the Court appears. The
judges first sit down, then get up, and the president,
without looking at the accused, reads the sentence
in a quiet, even voice: the accused, who has already
suffered three years for not being a soldier, is con
demned: first to be dismissed from the army and
deprived of all his rights and privileges; secondly,
to four years of prison.

The guard takes out the young man; then all
those who took part in the ceremony return to
their occupations and habitual distractions, as if
nothing in particular had happened.

Except that the young officer, great smoker,
feels a strange twinge of uneasiness, which recurs
each time he thinks of the strong, noble words of
the accused, said with so much emotion. During
the deliberation the young officer had a fancy to
express a contrary opinion to the decision of his

The Law of Violence 57

elders, but he was embarrassed, so he swallowed
hastily and agreed.

That evening, at the home of the colonel of the
regiment, between two games of cards, when all
the guests were seated around the tea table, they
began to speak of the case of the refractory soldier.
The colonel expressed his opinion frankly that lack
of instruction was the cause of such incidents; one
assimilates all kinds of ideas without adapting them
to circumstances, and that leads to all sorts of ex
travagances.

"Pardon me, uncle," said a student, a social
democrat, and the colonel's niece. "The strong
opinions and the energy of this man are worthy of
respect. One should only regret that this force has
taken a wrong direction/* added the young girl,
thinking how such energy would be valuable if
used in the service of socialist ideas, instead of being
wasted in out-of-date religious whims.

"Come, you are a mad revolutionary," said her
uncle, with a smile.

The young officer, cigarette in mouth, inter
vened in his turn:

"Yet it seems to me that from the Christian
point of view it would be difficult to contradict
him/ 5

"I don't know anything about any point of
view," said a general severely. "But I do know that

5j8 The Law of Love

a soldier should be a soldier, and not a preacher."

"In my opinion," said the president of the
tribunal, his eyes twinkling, "The most important
thing of all is not to lose time if we want to finish
our game."

"If any of you want more tea, you will be served
at the card table," said the master of the house
amiably, while one of the players, in a practical
manner, threw the cards fanshape on the table.
Each one took his place.

In the prison entry, where the soldiers who were
guarding the prisoner were waiting with him for
their orders, another conversation took place:

"How is it that the priest does not understand
what is said exactly in the books?" asked one of the
soldiers with an Ukrainian accent.

"Naturally he doesn't understand, "answered the
prisoner. "Or he woud have said as I do: Christ
commands us to love and not to kill."

"That is true, but very difficult."

"It is not at all difficult. Just see, I have been
locked up, and I am going to be locked up again;
but I have such a light heart that I wish you all had
the same/*

A middle-aged noncommissioned officer drew
near, and addressing the prisoner, said to him
respectfully:

"Well, Seminitch, you've been condemned?"

___ The Law of Violence 59

"Yes, of course."

The noncommissioned officer shook his head,
and added:

"That is all very well, but one has to suffer
for it."

"It is necessary," answered the prisoner with a
smile, visibly touched by this sympathy.

"I know: Our Lord suffered and He told us to
suffer also; but it is difficult, just the same."

As he was speaking, the handsome Polish sergeant
entered with a quick, authoritative step, and said
briefly:

"No conversation here. Put him in prison."

The sergeant was especially severe, because he
had received orders to see that the prisoner did not
talk with the soldiers. In fact, during the time that
this refractory youth had been in prison, four men
had already been seduced by him; they had been
court-martialled for refusing to serve, and were
imprisoned in their turn.

It is much more natural to conceive of a society
directed and guided by rational ideas that are
profitable to every one, than the society of the
present day, where violence alone determines the
conduct of men.

It is likely that constraint, exercised by the
state, was necessary in former days to assure the
grouping of men; perhaps it is still necessary to
day; but men can no longer close their eyes, or
help feeling the state of things in which violence
can only trouble their peaceful existence. It fol
lows that in seeing it, or in feeling it, they cannot
prevent themselves from seeking to realize this
order of things. The means of realizing it is in the
moral improvement of each one of us, and in
abstention from any violence.

(Daily Reading, October 13th.)

The declarations made before the military judges
by conscientious objectors are only repetitions of
what has been said since the appearance of the
Christian doctrine. The most ardent and sincere

60

The Law of Violence 61

fathers of the Church declared the teaching of
Christ to be incompatible with one of the funda
mental conditions of the existence of the State:
armed force; in other words, a Christian must not
be a soldier, prepared to kill every one that he is
ordered to do.

The Christian communities of the first four cen
turies declared categorically, from the mouths of
their pastors, the prohibition of all murder, indi
vidual or collective that is to say, war.

The philosopher Tatian, converted to Christian
ity in the second century, considered murder in
warfare to be just as inadmissable for his co-reli
gionists as any other kind of assassination, and
looked upon the laurel crown of the victor as an
unworthy symbol. In the same period Athinagorus
of Athens says that not only must Christians not
kill, but that they must not be witnesses of assas
sinations.

In the third century Clement of Alexandria con
trasted warlike pagans with "the peaceful com
munity of Christians."

But it was Origen who most forcibly expressed
the Christians* dislike of war. In applying the words
of Isaiah to the Christians: the time would come
when men would change their swords for sickles
and their lances for ploughs, he says clearly: "We
do not arm ourselves against any nation; we do not

62 The Law of Love

learn the art of war; because, through Jesus Christ,
we have become the children of peace." Answering
the accusation of Celsus against the Christians who
avoided military service, (for, in his opinion, the
Roman Empire would disappear as soon as it be
came Christian) , Origen said that Christians fought
more than the rest for the welfare of the emperor,
since they defended him by good actions, by
prayers and good influence on other men. As to
armed combat, Origen added that he was certain
that they would not take part with the imperial
armies, or would they take part even if the emperor
himself obliged them to do so.

Tertullian, a contemporary of Origen, expressed
himself as categorically on the impossibility of
Christians being warriors. Speaking of military
service he said: "It is not fitting to serve at the same
time the symbol of Christ and the symbol of the
devil, the power of light, and the power of darkness.
One and the same soul cannot serve two masters.
And how may we wage war without the sword
that God himself has taken away from us? How
can we learn the use of the sword, when Our Lord
said that he who raised the sword would perish by
the sword? And how can the sons of peace take
part in combat?"

The celebrated Cyprian in his turn said: "The
world is going mad in mutual extermination, and

The Law of Violence 63

murder, considered as a crime when committed
individually, becomes a virtue when it is committed
by large numbers. It is the multiplication of the
frenzy that assures impunity to the assassins."

In the fourth century Lactance declared the
same thing: "There cannot be a thousand excep
tions to God's commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
No arm save truth should be carried by Christians."

The rules of the Church of Egypt in the third
century, as well as the Testament of Our Lord
Jesus Christ^ absolutely forbid any Christian to
serve in the army, under pain of excommunication.

In the Acts of the Saints, there are many exam
ples of martyrdom suffered by the faithful of
Christ for having refused to serve. For example,
Maximilian who, brought before the conscription
council and asked to give his name to the proconsul,
answered: "I am called a Christian, and conse
quently am not a warrior." He was delivered to the
executioner.

Marcellus was a centurian in the Legion of Troy.
Having embraced the Christian doctrine, and
being convinced that war was an impious act, he
took off his armor before the whole legion, threw
it on the ground, and declared that having become
a Christian he could no longer remain in the army.
He was imprisoned, but again he repeated: "A
Christian must not carry arms." He was executed.

64 The Law of Love

Cassius likewise confessed to the same religion
and refused to serve. He suffered a similar fate.

Under Julian the Apostate, Martin, brought up
in a military atmosphere, refused to continue his
service. During the examination that the emperor
made him undergo he only answered with these
words:

"I am a Christian and therefore am not a
warrior."

In the year 325, the first general council insti
tuted a severe penance for Christians who went
back to the army after having left it. Here are the
exact terms of this order in the Russian transla
tion, recognized by the Orthodox Church: 1

"Called by the grace of the profession of faith
and having shown their first ardor in removing
their warlike accouterments, then having returned
to them, like dogs towards their vomitings, . . .
they should implore the Church for a period of ten
years; asking pardon, listening to the Scriptures,
for three years on the threshold of the Church/'

Christians, enrolled for the first time in the army,
were instructed not to kill their enemies during war.
In the fourth century Basil the Great recommended
that soldiers who had infringed this rule should not
be admitted to the Communion for three years.

1 The English translation above is taken from the French translation
from the Russian of the Orthodox Church. (Translator's note.)

The Law of Violence

One sees that the conviction that war is incom
patible with Christianity was in force not only
during the first three centuries, during which time
Christians were persecuted, but even at the mo
ment of their triumph over paganism, when their
doctrine was recognized as the State religion.

Ferrucius declared it very clearly and paid for
it with his life. "He forbade Christians to shed
blood, even in a just war and under the orders of
Christian sovereigns."

In the fourth century Lucifer, Bishop of Calaris,
professed that the Christians should defend their
greatest possession, faith, not in killing, but in
sacrificing their own lives.

Paulin, Bishop of Nole, who died in the year 43 1,
threatened eternal torment to those who served
Caesar bearing arms.

Thus it was during the first four centuries of
Christianity.

But under the reign of Constantin the standards
of the Roman Legions were already carrying the
cross. And in 416 an order was decreed with the
result that pagans were not admitted to the army.
All the soldiers had become Christians; or, in other
words, all the Christians had, with few exceptions,
denied Christ.

Since then, and for about fifteen centuries, the
simple and evident truth of the incompatibility of

66 The Law of Love

Christianity with the committing of all kinds of
violence, assassination included, has been so hidden
from men that generation after generation succeed
each other, kill, participate in murders and profit
by them, while professing the doctrine that con
demns them.

The crusades were a derision, and the most hor
rible crimes were committed in the name of Chris
tianity; so much so, that the few people who kept
to the true principles of Christianity, not admitting
any violence: the Montagnists, Albigeois, etc. were
universally despised or persecuted.

But, like fire, truth little by little consumes all
the veils that hide it, and since the beginning of the
last century it has sprung up with even increasing
brightness by attracting attention in spite of every
thing.

This truth has often been manifested in Russia,
especially in the beginning of the nineteenth cen
tury. Its manifestations were doubtless many, but
its traces have been effaced; a few only are known
to us.

XI

True courage in the struggle cheers the man who
knows that God is his ally.

In the world ye have tribulation: but be of
good cheer; I have overcome the world.

(John, xvi, 33.)

Do not wait for the realization of the divine
work that you are serving; but know that not
one of your efforts will be useless, but will hasten
the hour.

(Daily Reading, May 24th.)

The most important acts, both for the one who
accomplishes them and for his fellow creatures,
are those that have remote consequences.

(Daily Reading, May 28th.)

A governor-in-chief of the Caucasus, Mouraviev,
noted the following in his private diary:

In 1 8 1 8 five serfs of the Government of Tambov
who had refused to serve in the army were sent
away from the Caucasus. On several occasions they
were made to suffer the "bastonade," a torture that
consisted in making them pass between two rows
of troops, each soldier in turn striking the victim.

67

6S The Law of Love

But it did no good. The defaulting recruits re
peated: "All men are equal; our sovereign is a man
like us; we will not obey him, we will not pay taxes,
and above all, we will not kill men, our brothers,
in war. You may cut us up into pieces, we will not
yield: we will not wear the uniform, we will not
eat at the mess, we will not be soldiers. We will
contribute our pennies if you like, but we do not
wish to receive any of the State money."

These men and others like them were bastonaded
until they were left to die; they rotted in the
prison, and nothing more was said about them.
But their number increased, just the same, during
the last century.

For example, they say that in 1827 two soldiers
of the guard, Nicolaiev and Boddanov, fled into a
hermitage of the sect of old believers, installed in
the middle of a forest by the merchant Sokolov.
When captured, they refused to serve again or to
take the oath, because it was contrary to their con
viction. The chiefs decided to put them to the
torture of the bastonade between two rows of sol
diers, and then they were placed in disciplinary
companies.

M. Koltchine 1 wrote that: "In 1830, a man and
a woman were arrested in the Government of
Yaroslav. At their examination the man said that

1 The Deported and the Prisoners of the Convent of SolovkJ.

. The Law of Violence 69

he was named Egor Ivanov, aged 65 years, but that
he did not know who he was. He had never had
any other father, he said, than Christ the Saviour.
The woman made the same declaration.

"During the exhortation made by the priest
before the court, the two accused added that they
had on earth no other czar than the one in Heaven;
that they recognized no emperor, nor any civil or
religious authorities. On another occasion Egor
Ivanov, then aged 70 years, repeated that he did not
recognize any of the authorities, and that he con
sidered that they had all digressed from the rules
of the Christian religion. He was exiled to the
monastery of Solovki to be employed in the works
there; but he was shut up, no one knows why, and
he remained there until his death. He kept firmly
to the position he had taken.

"In 1835 an unknown man calling himself only
Ivan was arrested in the Government of Yaroslav.
He declared that he did not recognize the saints, the
emperor, nor any authority. He was exiled by order
of the emperor to Solovki to be employed in the
fields. In the same year he was transferred to the
army, also by imperial order.

A recruit of the Government of Moscow, Ivan
Schouroupov, aged nineteen, refused, in 1849, to
take the oath of allegiance, in spite of all the pun
ishments incurred. As the motive for his refusal he

70 The Law of Love

gave the Word of God, which commands that God
alone shall be served. That is why he did not wish
to serve the emperor, or to take the oath of
allegiance, for fear of committing perjury. The
military authorities, fearing the bad effect that this
would have on the others, decided to imprison
Schouroupov in the monastery without trial. Em
peror Nicholas I inscribed the following resolution
on the report of the affair that was presented to
him: Banish the said recruit to the Monastery of
Solovki."

This is the information recorded in the press
relative to some isolated cases constituting evidently
one in a thousand of all those who, in Russia, have
recognized the impossibility of professing Chris
tianity and at the same time obeying the public
authorities.

As to entire communities, counting thousands of
members and moved by the same faith, they were
very numerous in the last century and still are
to-day. I shall mention the Molokanes, Jehovists,
Khlisti, Skoptsi, the old believers, and many others,
who generally dissemble their denial of govern
mental authority, but consider it as the element of
every evil, and as being diabolic.

It was above all the Doukhobors, who, number
ing several tens of thousands, forcibly denied all
public powers. Several thousands of these Doukho-

The Law of Violence 71

bors remained firm in their conviction, in spite of
all the persecutions to which they were exposed.
They were finally exiled to Canada.

The number of defaulting recruits increased
more and more. From the time that our govern
ment instituted universal military service the
refusal of true Christians multiplied still more. No
persecution, no punishment stopped these young
people from what they considered disobedience to
Divine law.

By chance I have known quite a number of these
men who have suffered painfully for their faith in
Russia, and many of whom are still detained in
prison. Here are the names of some of the victims:
Zalubovsky, Lubitch, Mokeiev, Drojjine, Izum-
chenko, Olkhovik, Sereda, Farafonov, Egorov,
Gancha, Akoulov, Chaga, Dimchitz, Ivanenko,
Bezverkhi, Slobudnuk, Mironov, Bougaiev, Cheli-
chev, Menchikov, Reznikov, Rojkov, Chevchook,
Bourov, Goncharenko, Zakharov, Tregoubov, Vol-
kov, Koschevoi.

Among those who are imprisoned I know: Ikon-
nikov, Kourtych, Varnavsky, Chniakine, Molossai,
Koudrine, Pantchikov, Deriabine, Kalatchev, Ban-
nov, Zinkitchev, Martchenko, Prozretsky, Davi-
dov.

I know others in Austria, in Hungary, Serbia,
Bulgaria, Holland, France, Switzerland, Sweden,

72 The Law of Love

Belgium. Better still, these refusals to serve in the
army have taken place lately and for the same
motives in the Mussulman world, notable among
the Babides, in Persia, and in the sect of the Legion
of God in Russia.

The motive for these refusals is always the same,
as natural, necessary and incontrovertible: recogni
tion of the necessity of observing the religious law
rather than the civil one, when these are in opposi
tion. But a civil law exacting military service, that
is to say, the command to kill by order of the chiefs,
can only be in opposition to every religious and
moral law founded on the love of one's neighbor.
It is the case for all religious doctrines, Christian
as well as Mohammedan, Buddhist, Brahman and
Confucianist.

The definition of the law of love given nineteen
centuries ago by Christ has in our days penetrated
the consciousness of men, no longer by the observ
ance of Christ's teaching, but directly, among all
those in whom the moral sense is developed.

Here, and only here is our salvation.

It would seem at first sight that the refusals to
serve in the army are only isolated cases. But one
forgets that these are not occasional acts, deter
mined by certain circumstances; they are the re
sult of sincere professions of religious doctrines.

It is evident, then, that this faith ruins everything

The Law of Violence 73.

that is based on principles contrary to it. Indeed, as
soon as men understand that their participation in
violence is incompatible with the Christianity that
they profess; as soon as they refuse to serve as
soldiers, tax collectors, judges, jury, police agents,
the acts of violence from which the whole world
is suffering, will disappear immediately.

XII

When you can say with entire truth and with
a whole heart: "Lord God, lead me wherever thou
desirest," then, only, do you deliver yourself from
servitude and become really free.

(Thoughts of the Wise, April 14th.) 1

A free man is only master of what he can dis
pose of without hindrance. But one cannot dispose
entirely of oneself. That is why, when you see that
a man wishes to dispose not of himself, but of
others, know that he is not free: he has become the
slave of his desire to dominate men.

(Epictetus. Thoughts of the 'Wise, June llth.)

What can these hundreds, these thousands say if
you like, these hundreds of thousands of men
feeble, powerless, isolated, do in the presence of a
considerable number of other men, docile to the
government's orders and provided with the most
formidable arms of destruction? Does not the
struggle seem unequal, impossible?

Nevertheless, the result of this struggle is as

1 Another collection of Tolstoy, made before Daily Reading,

74

The Law of Violence 75

little in doubt as is the struggle between the shades
of night and the light of dawn.

Here is what was written by one of these young
men who was imprisoned for having refused to
serve in the army:

"Sometimes I am able to speak with soldiers of
the guard, and I cannot help smiling when they say
to me:

'Come, my lad, it can't be very easy for you
to spend all the years of your youth in prison/

'Doesn't it all end the same way?' I say.

'That's true, but you wouldn't be so badly off in
the regiment, if you wished to serve/

'I am better off here than the rest of you in the
regiment/

"And they answer:

'That is true. But just the same, here it is the
fourth year that you have been imprisoned, while
if you had done your military service, you would
have been free long ago/

'But since I am all right here/

'That is odd,' mused the soldier, shaking his
head, and looking pensive.

"I have the same conversations with the soldiers
imprisoned with me:

'It is queer. You endure everything, and in spite
of all, you are always gay and active,' one of them
said to me, a soldier of Jewish origin.

76 The Law of Love

"My other prison comrades said when they saw
any of their number become sad:

Took here, you are scarcely shut up here before
you pine away. Look at Daddy (that is what they
call me on account of my beard) , he's been here
for a long time, but he's always gay/

"And at times we have long conversations just
for the sake of speaking; but sometimes in order to
speak of God, of life, and of other interesting
things. Or else one of my comrades speaks of his
life in his village, and one feels so well, listening.
In fact, I cannot complain of my existence here."

Another writes:

"I will not say that my mental life is always the
same. I pass moments of lassitude as well as moments
of joy.

"At the present time I am feeling well. But just
the same it takes a lot of strength to take part with
a feeling of triumph in what goes on in prison. In
order not to give way, I try to see into the depths
of things, and to persuade myself that it is all
momentary, that I have more force within me than
is needed for whatever the case may be, and joy
brightens my heart again, and wipes away every
thing that has just happened. It is in this mental
struggle that my existence is passing/*

A third writes:

"Sentence has been passed. I am condemned to

The Law of Violence 77

five years, five months, and six days of prison. You
could never believe the joy and peace I felt after
the judgement, as if I had been relieved of an
enormous weight. I wish I could always feel as light
and active."

Quite different is the state of soul of those who
participate in violence, submitting to it or profit
ing by it. All these thousands, all these millions of
men are ignorant of the very natural sentiment of
love for one's neighbor; on the contrary, they hate,
blame, or fear, suppressing all their human senti
ments to such a point, that the assasination of their
brothers seems the indispensable condition of their
well-being.

"You reproach us for the cruelty of the execu
tions/ 5 say the Russian conservatives to-day. "But
what shall we do with these wretches? In France
they quieted the country only after cutting off
innumerable heads. Let them stop throwing bombs,
and we will stop hanging them/'

With the same inhuman cruelty the leaders of
the revolution insist upon the death of the leaders
of the government. The revolutionaries, workmen
from the factories or the fields, insist upon the
death of the capitalists, the landed proprietors.
These men know that their acts are contrary to
human nature and they lie, seeking to arouse
wickedness in themselves, in order to smother the

78 The Law of Love

truth that is in them, and they suffer from the
most smarting evil, that of the soul.

Some believe that they are impelled by human
nature to accomplish the task towards which all
humanity is tending, and which certainly results
in good, as much to the individual as collectively;
others, in spite of all their efforts to hide it from
themselves, know that all their acts are contrary to
our nature, and that they are sticking to a task
from which humanity is constantly withdrawing,
a task from which mankind is suffering, as well as
each one of us, and they themselves more than any.
On one side there are liberty, peace and sincerity;
on the other, slavery, fear and dissimulation. On
the one side is faith, on the other lack of belief; on
one side truth, on the other lies; on one side love,
on the other, hatred; on one side a radiant future,
and on the other a frightful past.

How can one doubt which side will be victorious?

What irrefutable truths were expressed by a
French writer, now dead, when he wrote this mar
vellously inspired letter:

"No matter what he does, no matter what he
says, no matter what one says to him, man has only
one body to nourish, one intelligence to cultivate
and develop; he has one soul to satisfy. This soul is
also working incessantly, in continual evolution
towards the light and truth. As long as it will not

^ The Law of Violence 7

have received all the light, or conquered all the
truth, it will torment him.

Well, it has never worried him, never dominated
him so much as in the present day. It is, as it were,
in the air that one breathes. The individual souls
who alone have had the will to undertake a social
regeneration have been gradually sought out, called,
approached, united and understood, and have
formed a group, a centre of attraction towards
which other souls now fly from the four quarters
of the globe, as swallows towards a mirror. They
more or less constitute, as one might say, a collective
soul, in order that in future men may realize in
common, the coming union and regular progress
of nations who have recently been hostile to each
other. I find and recognize this new soul in facts
that seem the most likely to be denied.

"This arming of all the nations, these threats
that their representatives make to each other, this
renewing of race persecution, these enmities among
compatriots, and even the horseplay in the Sor-
bonne are examples that have a bad appearance, but
are not a bad augury. They are the last convulsions
of what is going to disappear. The social body acts
like the human body; the malady is only a violent
effort of the organism to free itself from a morbid
and harmful element.

"Those who have profited, and who hope to go

80 The Law of Love

on profiting for a long time, by the errors of the
past, will unite in order that nothing shall be
changed. As a result, there are these arms, these
threats, these persecutions; but if you will look
closely you will see that all that is merely external.
It is collosal and empty. The soul is not there; it
has gone elsewhere; these millions of armed men,
who are exercising every day in preparation for a
general war of extermination, do not hate those
that they must fight, and not one of their chiefs
dares to declare this war. As to the claims, even the
most serious ones, of those at the bottom, a great
and sincere pity, which at last recognizes them as
legitimate, is answering them from above.

The entente is inevitable within a certain time,
nearer than one supposes. I do not know if it is
because I am going to leave this world soon, and if
the glimmerings of light beyond the horizon have
enlightened me also, affecting my sight, but I
believe that our world is going to enter into the
realization of the words: Love one another, with
out bothering, either, whether it was a man or a
God who said them.'* 1

Yes, it is certainly in the practical realization of
the law of love, in its true significance, that is to
say, as a supreme law, admitting of no exception,

1 Letter from A. Dumas fils to the director o the Gaitloh entitled
Mysticism in School (Translator's note.)

The Law of Violence 81

in which is found the salvation from the horrible
condition confronting the nations of the Christian
world; a condition which is gradually reaching the
point of seeming to have no solution.

XIII

Social life can be bettered only by individual
self -denial.

(Daily Reading, January 19th.)

Do what you have to do in life according to
divine will, and in that way you will improve the
lives of everybody.

(Daily Reading, January 17th.)

"The crushing heaviness of evil is weighing down
on men," I wrote fifteen years ago. "They are
seeking the way to free themselves. They know that
by uniting their efforts they would be able to lift
up this weight and throw it off; but they cannot
agree as to how they shall work, when every one is
dropping lower and lower, leaving the weight on
the shoulders of the rest. Thus it is getting heavier
and heavier for the greater number, and this weight
would have crushed them long ago if men had not
been found who thought less of the consequences
of their acts than of the concord of their conduct
with the calls of their consciences.

"These men are Christians. They are that because
instead of seeking to attain the external goal, for

82

The Law of Violence 83

which one must get the consent o all, they see only
the internal goal, for the realization of which it is
not necessary to agree with any one; and yet here
is the foundation of true Christianity.

"That is why freedom from the servitude in
which we find ourselves at present is impossible for
those who seek it in collective effort. It can only be
obtained by the substitution of the law of love for
the law of violence, that fundamental principle of
Christianity.

"This doctrine says to each individual: You
cannot know the end of social life; you can only
picture it as a form of progressive approach towards
universal happiness, towards the realization of the
Kingdom of God on earth. On the other hand, you
are aware of the aim of personal life: it is the devel
opment in each of the greatest amount of love, in
order that the kingdom of God may be realized.
This aim is certain and is easy to approach.

"You can be ignorant of the best methods for
attaining the external goal; you can meet obstacles
in the way of its realization; while nothing can
stop your drawing nearer to inner perfection: the
increase of love in you and in others.

"So it is enough to institute, in the place of the
illusory social aim, this individual aim of life, the
only sure and accessible one, and the chains that
you thought were fastening you forever will drop

84 The Law of Love

immediately, and you will feel yourself absolutely
free . . .

"The Christian can ignore the laws established
by the State because he has no need of them for
himself, or for others; he considers that human
life is better assured by the law of love professed by
him than by the law of violence that one wants
to impose on him. . . .

"Having recognized the efficacy of the law of
love, he does not consider the law of violence
obligatory, and he denounces the other as the most
horrible of mistakes. . . .

"The profession of true Christianity which in
cludes the precept of nonresistance to violence by
evil, relieves those faithful to this doctrine from
any external authority. Much better, it gives them
the possibility of obtaining better conditions in life,
those that men seek vainly by changing its external
forms; in reality, these forms change only after
the modifications that have arisen in mens* con
sciences, and in the measure in which this conscience
has evolved.

"It was not the orders of a government that
abolished the murder of children, tortures, slavery,
but the universal conscience that caused these
orders.

"Since the evolution of conscience determines
the changes in the modes of life, the contrary, as

The Law of Violence

well, should happen, they say; and as it is more
agreeable and easier to modify external forms
(because the results are more apparent) , this activ
ity is preferred to the one whose aim is to modify
conscience. That is why one is more frequently
occupied with the foundation, rather than with the
form.

"It is often argued in proof of the falsity and
lack of realization of the Christian doctrine the
fact that, although revealed to men nineteen cen
turies ago, it has been adopted by them only out
wardly. It is said: even if it has been known for so
long a time, it has not become our rule of conduct;
if so many Christian martyrs have died without
making any change in the order of existing things,
that clearly shows that the doctrines are false and
unattainable.

"To think and speak thus is to say that seeds
buried in the earth and not sprouting instantly are
not good seeds and should be destroyed.

"It is inevitable that the Christian doctrine was
not admitted in its entire signification at the mo
ment of its construction.

"A doctrine ruining the whole order of existing
things cannot be accepted entirely; that is why it
was admitted only under a weakened form. The
great majority of men were incapable at that epoch
of assimilating this doctrine by spiritual means.

The Law of Love

They had to show them first by experience that all
digressions from the commandments of the doc
trine would be disastrous to them.

"The doctrine was therefore accepted as a new
outer cult, replacing paganism, but the pagan con
ditions of life did not undergo any change what
ever. Nevertheless, weakened as it was, this doctrine
based on the Scripture could not help but produce
a certain result, that in spite of all the efforts of
the servants of false Christianity to hide its true
meaning, penetrated little by little into the con
sciences of men.

"This double effort, positive and negative, lasted
eighteen centuries. On the one hand people were
drawn further and further away from the pos
sibility of leading reasonable and good lives; on the
other hand the doctrine was coming to light more
and more under its true aspect.

"In our own time we already see the true Chris
tianity, until now understood only by a few minds
endowed with religious sentiments, manifested in
the form of socialist doctrines, accessible to the
simplest being, while social life continues to exist
in evident contradiction to this truth.

"One trembles before the present horrible condi
tion of human life: taxes, clergy, great landed
properties, prisons, guillotines, cannon, dynamite,
millionaires and beggars. In reality all these horrors

The Law of Violence 87

are the result of our own acts. Not only can they
disappear, but they must disappear, in conformity
with the new conscience of humanity. Christ said
that He conquered the world; and as a matter of
fact, He has conquered it. As dreadful as it is the
evil no longer exists, because it has disappeared
from the consciences of men.

"To-day humanity is passing through a transi
tion phase. Everything is ready for passing from
one state to the other; it needs only a slight push to
start this passing. And it can take place at any
minute. *

"The social conscience already condemns the
former modes of life and is ready to adopt the new.
The whole world feels it, and is convinced of it.
But inertia, fear of the unknown, retards its appli
cation in practice, as for a long time it has been
retarded in theory. In such cases it sometimes needs
only one word to make the force called public
opinion change the whole order of things at once,
and do it without a struggle, or violence.

"The freeing of men from servitude, from
ignorance, can not be obtained by revolution, syn
dicates, peace congresses, etc., but simply by the
conscience of each one of us, forbidding us to
participate in violence and asking us in amaze
ment: Why are you doing that?

"It is enough for us to get free of the condition

88 The Law of Love

that hides our true mission from us, for us to ask
in fear and indignation how any one can insist upon
our committing such horrible crimes. And this
awakening can take place at any instant."

This is what I wrote fifteen years ago, and I
repeat with conviction to-day that this awakening
is about to take place.

Certainly I shall not be there to aid in it. I, an
old man, more than eighty years of age; but I know
with the same certainty that I see spring follow
winter and night come after day, that the time has
already come in the life of Christian humanity.

XIV

The human soul is Christian in its nature.
Christianity is always accepted by man as a rem
iniscence of something forgotten. It raises him
to a height from which he discovers a world of
happiness, ruled by a natural law. Man's feelings
on discovering the natural truth are those of a
prisoner, one who has been confined in a dark
tower and who, climbing to its highest balcony,
discovers a marvellous world, until then un
suspected by him.

The idea of having to submit to man's law Is
enslaving; the idea of submitting to God's law
sets one free.

(Daily Reading, January 28th.)

One of the surest conditions of human action is
the fact that the further away is the goal towards
which we are struggling, and the less we desire to
help the fruit of our efforts, the more certain we
are of our success.

(John RuskLn.)

The most important and the most necessary
work, as much for the authors as for others, is the

89

90 The Law of Love

one that is fully appreciated a long time after the
death of the author.

(Daily Reading, May 28th.)

"In order that men may be able to get rid of
governments founded on violence, they must all be
religious; in other words, they must all be prepared
to sacrifice their material good to God's law, and
live, not for the future, but for the present, in
forcing themselves to accomplish the divine will
which is in love. But the men of our time are not
religious, and cannot, consequently, adopt this line
of conduct."

Those who say this suppose that to be religious is
a state contrary to our nature; that it is manifested
only in exceptional cases, and is the effect of educa
tion or suggestion* In reality, it is the absence of
faith, the only natural condition of life, that causes
men to-day to believe that religion is not a natural
need.

Just as work is not an artificial thing imposed
on men, but something inevitable, without which
men cannot live, so faith, the consciousness of
man's relation to the universe and its resulting rule
of conduct, is an inevitable phenomenon. This
faith, far from being artificial, exceptional, incul
cated by education, is in human nature; we cannot
do without it any more than birds who have lost
their wings can fly.

The Law of Violence 9J.

If in the Christian world to-day we see men who
have lost their consciences, or rather, whose reli
gious feeling has been obscured, this abnormal situa
tion is temporary, has happened by chance, bred
of special conditions in which men are living; this
state is as exceptional as that of men who live
without working.

So in order to reconquer this sentiment which is
natural and indispensable to life, it is necessary for
men to dissipate the lies that obscure the sentiment
within them.

It will be sufficient to free them from the de
ception of the Christian doctrine as corrupted by
the Church, which justifies a social organization
founded on violence, for the chief obstacle to the
supreme law of love to disappear at once; the law
that tolerates no exception, and that was revealed
to humanity nineteen centuries ago, as the only
answer to the demands of modern conscience.

From the moment that this law penetrates the
universal conscience as the supreme law of life,
our dreadful moral condition, permitting the great
est iniquities and acts of barbarism to be considered
natural, will disappear of itself. Then will come to
pass everything dreamed of and promised to-day
by socialist and anarchist builders of future worlds.
The result obtained will be even greater.

And this end will be attained just because it will

92 The Law of Love

not be necessary to make use of the violent means
that the transgressors extoll to-day. We will be
free from the evil that is torturing and corrupting
the whole world, not by preserving the present
governments, monarchies or republics, or by sup
pressing them and replacing them with socialist
or communists organizations; or in general, by
conceiving an organization and imposing it by
force; but by having recourse to the only way:
each one of us, without worrying about the result
to ourselves or others, must in our own lives ob
serve the supreme law of love condemning every
violence.

XV

A man who continues to live in error sees the
incarnation of power in certain sacred institutions
which are the indispensable organs of the social
body. The man who awakens to the truth sees this
assumed by men sunk in error and who attribute
to it a fantastic importance having no possible
justification, and who accomplish their will by
force.

For the clairvoyant, these lost people, bribed as
often as not, resemble brigands who hold up
travellers on the high roads. For any one who has
awakened to the truth, the entity called State does
not exist, and therefore there is not the slightest
justification, for him, for the acts of violence
committed in the name of the State. And any
participation in these acts is impossible for him.

To sum up, state violence will disappear, not
with the aid of external means, but thanks only
to the calls of conscience of men who have
awakened to the truth.

(Daily Reading, October 16th.)

The objection will be made: "But how can we
get along without a government, or any public
authority? No state of society has ever existed

93

94 The Law of Love

without a government, or any public authority?
No state of society has ever existed without one or
the other."

Men are so accustomed to the government under
which they live that it seems to them an inevitable,
permanent form of social life.

To tell the truth, it is so only in appearance;
men have lived and are still living outside of any
static organization. All the savage peoples who have
not yet attained to what we call civilization have
lived and are still living in that way. Men whose
conception of life go beyond civilization live thus
also; as they are living in Europe, in America, and
above all in Russia, where Christian communities
deny public authority, not feeling the need of it,
and submitting only to forced interference.

The State is only a temporary form of human
groups. Just as the life of an individual is constantly
in a state of evolution and bettering itself, so the
life of an entire community progresses and im
proves.

Every human being begins as a nurseling,
plays and studies; then he begins to work, marries,
brings up his children, gets rid a little of all his
passions, and acquires wisdom with age. The life
of nations evolves in the same way; only their
phases of development last not years, but hundreds
and thousands of years. And as the necessary trans-

The Law of Violence 9$

formations take place in the spiritual, or rather,
intangible world, in the case of the individual, the
essential changes in humanity take place at first in
the intangible world also: that of the religious
conscience. And as with the individual the trans
formations are so slow that one could not indicate
the month, the day or the hour when the child
becomes a youth, and the youth an adult, and we
cannot always say positively when these changes
have already taken place; neither can we indicate
the epoch when humanity, or a certain part of
humanity, passed from one religious age into
another. But as we perceive that a youth is no
longer a child, we see that humanity, or a certain
part of it, has passed from one period into another,
when the change has already taken place.

To-day we are watching the passage of human
ity from one age to another among the nations of
the Christian world.

We do not know the hour when a child becomes
a youth, but we know that he can no longer play
childish games; we cannot indicate the year, nor
even the decade, when the Christian world passed
from its former form of life and commenced the
other age, determined by the religious conscience;
but we cannot help seeing that the Christian world
can no longer play seriously at conquests, at dip
lomatic artifices, at constitutions, at democratic,

96 The Law of Lave

socialist, revolutionary and anarchist parties, and
above all can no longer give itself up to all sorts of
games that are based on violence*

This phenomenon is becoming evident among us
particularly in Russia, after the external transfor
mation of our political government. Seriously
minded people cannot help feeling, as regards this
new form of government, as an adult would feel
if he were given a present of a toy that he had
never seen as a child. No matter how interesting
and new the toy is, the adult has no need of it, and
can only receive it with a smile, That is the attitude
in Russia of all thinking men, as well as of the
popular masses, in regard to the Constitution, the
Douma, and all sorts of parties, revolutionary and
otherwise.

The Russians who I am convinced realize the
true sense of Christ's doctrine can no longer seri
ously believe that man's mission here below is to
employ the short period between his birth and
death in making speeches to legislative assemblies,
in judging his brothers in the courts, in capturing
them, in locking them up and assassinating them,
or throwing bombs at them, in taking away their
property; or to bother as to whether Finland, India,
Poland, Korea, are annexed to what is called Russia,
England, Prussia or Japan; or to seek to liberate
these annexed countries by force and to be prepared

The Law of Violence 97

to kill each other in quantities for that purpose. It
is impossible for a man of our time to be ignorant
in his inner consciousness of the madness of such
acts.

For if we do not perceive the horror of the
existence which we lead, if contrary to our nature,
it is only because the atrocities in the midst of which
we continue to live peacefully, appear so slowly
that we do not perceive them.

I once saw an old man abandoned to a horrible
fate: worms were crawling all over his body; he
could not move an inch without suffering atro
ciously; nevertheless the progress of the disease was
so slow that he did not perceive the horror of his
condition; he only asked for tea and sugar.

The same phenomenon is taking place in our
social life: we no longer see its horror, because we
have come to our present condition by degrees, and,
even as the old man, we rejoice at the appearance
of cinemas and automobiles.

It is not enough to say that the suppression of
violence, violence so contrary to the reasoning and
loving nature of man, cannot make our present
condition worse. That is why the question as to
whether we can live without governments not only
is not necessary, as the defenders of the order of
existing things would have us believe, but it is
quite ridiculous; as it would be to ask a man suf~

98 The Law of Love

faring torture, how he could live if his martyrdom
stopped,

The privileged members of the present state
imagine that the absence of every static organiza
tion would cause complete anarchy, the struggle of
all against all, as if it concerned a life in common,
not only of animals (they live in peace without
static violence) but of certain monstrous creatures,
guided in their acts only by hate and madness. To
tell the truth, they picture men like this because
they attribute to them aptitudes contrary to their
natures, and which, in reality, are developed by the
state of government that they uphold, in spite of
the evil that it does to men.

That is why the question as to what would men's
lives be without authority, government, without
public authority, can only be answered thus: it
is certain that in any case the evils caused by the
government will disappear: no more exclusive pos
session of the earth, no more taxes employed for
harmful purposes, no more divisions between
nations, or subjection of .some by the rest, no more
dissipation of all human forces to make war, no
more fear of bombs on one side, or of gallows on
the other; no more mad luxury for part of the
people and horrible poverty for the rest.

XVI

"We are living in a period of discipline, of cul
ture and of civilization, but it is still far off from
being a moral period. One can say that, in the
present condition of humanity, the prosperity in
creases with the misery of its inhabitants. And
one might ask if we would not be happier living
in a primitive state, deprived of all our culture of
the present day. For how can one make men happy
without making them moral and good?

(Kant, Daily Reading, June 16th.)

Try to conduct yourself in such a way that
you need not resort to violence.

(Daily Reading, October 13th.)

We are quite accustomed to find ways of man
aging other people's lives; and these methods do
not seem odd to us. They would be unnecessary,
however, if men were religious and free. They are,
in fact, the result of despotism, of the domination
of one or a few over many.

This error is harmful not only because it
causes suffering to those who feel the oppression
of despots, but even more so because their con
sciences no longer warn them of the necessity of

99

100 The Law of Love

bettering their condition. But only this conscience
can Lave an effect on one's fellow being.

Not only has one man not the right to dispose
of a great number, but a great number have not
the right to dispose of a single man.

(V. Tchertkov. Daily Reading,
November 22nd.)

"Wonderful. But will you kindly tell us what
form human society will take when it decides to
live without government?" ask those who believe
that men can always know what the social life of
the future will be, and who therefore credit the
same knowledge to those who wish to live without a
government.

This idea is only a common superstition, very
old and very prevalent, it is true. Men, whether
they submit, or refuse to submit to government,
never know and cannot know what form this
future state will take. How much less, then, could
a minority organize the lives of everybody, for this
organization can be effected not according to the
will of some of them, but as the result of numerous
intervening factors, the principal among which is
the religious development of the majority of men.

The superstition that causes one to think that
he can tell in advance how society will be organized

The Law of Violence 101

in the future, has its origin in the desire of the trans
gressors to justify their conduct, and in the desire
of the victims to explain and lighten the weight
of the constraint. The former persuade them
selves and others that they know the way to
make life take the form that they consider the best.
The latter, who undergo such constraint that they
do not feel strong enough to free themselves, have
the same conviction; for it permits them to give
a certain excuse for their position.

The history of nations ought to destroy this
superstition entirely.

At the end of the eighteenth century a few
Frenchmen tried to maintain the old despotic re
gime; but in spite of all their efforts this regime fell,
and the republic replaced it. In the same way, in
spite of all the efforts of the republican chiefs, in
spite of all their acts of violence, the empire re
placed the republic, and thus they succeeded each
other: empire, coalition, Charles X, a new revolu
tion, a new republic, Louis-Philippe, then other
governments up to the present day republic.

The same facts have been repeated wherever
violence is the basis of action. As for example, all
the efforts of the papacy, far from killing protes
tantism, have only developed it. The progress of
socialism is due to the efforts of capitalists.

In short, even in the case where the government

102 The Law of Love

established by the aid of violence is maintained for
a certain length of time, or is modified by the use
of force, it is only because at that period the form
of the social organization continues or ceases to
answer to the moral condition of the people. Not
because any external cause assures or modifies its
existence.

It follows that the axiom whereby a minority
can organize the life of the majority, an axiom in
the name of which one commits the greatest crimes,
is only a superstition. In the same way the activity
that results from it, and which is generally con
sidered as most honorable and important, as much
by the directors of the state as by the revolution
aries, is in reality only a pastime as useless as it is
harmful, and which above all prevents the true
happiness of humanity.

This superstition has caused and still causes much
blood to flow, and much horrible suffering. The
worst of it is that this superstition has always pre
vented and still prevents social betterment that
answers to the degree of the development of the
human conscience. It prevents true progress, be
cause men spend their entire efforts in concerning
themselves with others, thereby neglecting their
own moral regeneration, which alone can con
tribute to the regeneration of the world in general.

In fact, social life advances, and advances neces-

The Law of Violence 103

sarily towards the eternal ideal of perfection, thanks
to the progress of individuals in the endless path
of perfection.

One sees from all this the horror of the supersti
tion that makes us neglect our task of individual
betterment, and which alone procures personal
happiness and general welfare; the only means of
which we are really masters, contrary to the super
stition that invites us to concern ourselves with the
happiness of others which is not in our power. It
makes us employ the means of constraint as harm
ful for us as for others, and which takes us further
from individual as well as social perfection.

XVII

Let us each concern ourselves only with the
solution of the inner question, that of our own
conduct in life, and all questions concerning the
outer world will thereby receive their best solution.

We do not know, we cannot know, in what
general well-being consists; but we surely know
that the realization of this well-being is possible
only when we fulfill the law of goodness revealed
to each man.

If, instead of dreaming of universal salvation
we concern ourselves with our own; if, instead of
liberating humanity we liberate ourselves, we
would do a great deal more for the salvation and
freedom of every one.

(Herzen. Daily Reading, June 30th.)

In the individual life and in the social life there
is only one law: if you wish to better your life, be
ready to sacrifice it*

(Daily Reading, January 19th.)

Accomplish your task in life by obeying the
divine will, and you will be certain to help towards

104

The Law of Violence 105

the betterment of social life in the most efficient
way.

(Daily Reading, January 17th.)

The following objection is often made: "All that
you say may be true, but it will be possible to
abstain from every act of violence only when the
whole world, or even the majority, will understand
the disastrous, futile, and senseless meaning of
violence. While waiting for that, what can a few
isolated individuals do? Must we not defend our
selves, and let our neighbors be attacked by the
wicked?"

Let us suppose that a brigand is raising his knife
over his victim; I see him and am armed with a
revolver; so I can kill him. But I am not absolutely
certain what the brigand will do. He might not
strike, while I would surely kill him. That is why
the only thing a man can do in such a case, is to
follow his invariable rule of conduct, dictated by
his conscience. But his conscience may demand his
own life, but not that of another.

Thus, to the question as to what one should do
in the presence of a crime committed by one or by
a great number, every man, free of the superstition
that affirms the possibility of foreseeing the future,
will answer: Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you.

106 The Law of Love

"But others steal, pillage, kill, while I do none of
these things. Let them also follow the law of mutual
aid, then I, in my turn, can be asked to observe it,"
again object the men of our world, with the greater
assurance the higher their situations in the social
scale.

tf l do not steal," say the sovereign, the minister,
the general, the judge, the landed proprietor, the
merchant, the soldier, the police agent. As a matter
of fact, our idea of our social organization, founded
on violence, is so impressed upon us that we do not
perceive all the crimes that they commit each day
in the name of the public good; we see only the
rare attempts of violence of those who are called
murderers, burglars, or thieves.

<l He is a murderer, he is a thief, he does not ob
serve the rule of not doing unto others what you
would not have them do unto you," say the same
people who go on killing in war, forcing nations
to prepare for carnage, and who steal from and
despoil their own, as well as foreign nations. If the
rule of mutual aid has no more effect upon those
who, in our society are called murderers or thieves,
it is only because they constitute a part of the
immense majority of people who for generations
and generations were robbed and despoiled by men,
who do not see the criminal character of their acts.

That is why to the question of knowing what

The Law of Violence 107

attitude to take as regards those who use force
against us, one can only answer: "Stop doing unto
others what you would not have them do unto
you."

Without speaking of the inconsistency and of
the injustice of the punishment in certain cases of
violence, when the most horrible crimes committed
by the state in the name of the general good are
left unpunished, these same punishments have a
different result from what is generally expected.
In fact, they destroy the powerful force of public
opinion, which is a hundred times more capable of
guaranteeing society against every act of violence
than are the prisons and guillotines.

This reasoning can be applied with striking proof
in international relations.

"How could we do otherwise than resist the
invasion of our country by savages who come to
take away our property, our wives, our daughters?"
object those who wish to protect themselves from
the crimes that they commit against other nations.
"Yellow peril," cry the whites; "White peril," cry
the Hindus, Chinese and Japanese with more
reason.

But as soon as one is freed from the superstitions
that justify violence, one understands all the
horror of the crimes committed by one nation
against another, and even more, the moral stupidity

108 The Law of Love

that allows English, Russians, Germans, French,
Americans to dream of protecting themselves
against the very acts of violence that they commit
in India, in Indo-China, in Poland, in Manchuria,
in Algeria.

It is enough, then, to free ourselves, even for a
time, from the horrible superstition that lets us
believe in the possibility of knowing the future
forms of society a prophecy that justifies every
act of violence, and sincerely approves of our pres
ent life in order to understand immediately that
recognizing the necessity of opposing evil by
violence is only the justification of our habitual
vices: vengeance, cupidity, envy, ambition, pride,
cowardice, and spite.

XVIII

The Creator Himself has so arranged matters
that human actions are guided by interest and not
by justice; which is why all our efforts to estab
lish the value of certain actions are in vain. Not
one of us has ever known, does not know and can
never know, what the result of these actions, or
series of actions, will be for ourselves or for others.
But we all can know which action is just, and
which is not. We can know also that the con
sequences of justice will, eventually, be as good
as possible, for others, as for ourselves, although
we can never say of what this good will consist.

(John Ruskin.)

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.

(John, viii, 32.)

Man thinks; he was created thus. And he should
reason in a sensible way, that is evident. The man
who reasons in this manner thinks first of his aim
in life: thinks of his soul, of God, Just see of what
worldly men are thinking. Of everything, except
that. They dream of dancing music, singing, other
pleasures; they are occupied in building, getting

109

110 The Law of Love

rich, becoming powerful; they envy the rich, and
the kings. But they never think of the mission of
man.

(Pascal. Daily Reading, June 20th.)

From the moment that you are liberated, all of
you, leaders and rich, oppressed and poor, who suf
fer from the lies of false and static Christianity,
lies that hide what Christ revealed to you and what
your reason and your heart order you to do, you
will understand that the cause of all your physical
and moral sufferings has been in yourself.

Understand then, all of you, that you were born
neither slaves nor masters, that you are all free; but
you are so only when you have observed the
supreme law of life, and this law has been revealed
to you. It will be sufficient for you to renounce the
lies that hide it from you for you to see at once in
what it consists and where your happiness lies. This
law is in love, and happiness is found in its observ
ance. Understand that, and you will become really
free; you will acquire everything that to-day you
are vainly seeking to obtain by the complicated
means suggested to you by corrupted men.

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye
shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and
my burden is light."

(Matthew, xi, 28-32.)

The Law of Violence ill

You will be preserved from evil and you will
acquire the real good, not by looking after your
interest, not by envy, hatred, anger, ambition; not
even by a sense of justice, or above all by the care
of organizing the life of others; but, strange as it
may seem, only by the work of your own soul, not
following any outside interests, and not trying to
reason with its dictates.

Understand, then, that the belief in the pos
sibility of ordering the life of others is a vulgar
superstition which lasts only on account of its
hoary age. Understand that the men who make
use of it, beginning with the leaders of the state
and the ministers, and finishing with the spies and
executioners on the one hand, and the chiefs and
members of the opposition parties on the other, are
only pitiable people, strayed, occupied with a task
not only vain and stupid, but even the most abomin
able that one can conceive.

Men already see the ignominy of the spy and
executioner, and are beginning to see that of the
police, detectives, and even to a certain degree, of
military men; but they do not yet see it of the
judge, the minister, the sovereign, chiefs of parties,
revolutionaries. And yet the work of the latter is
as vile, as contrary to human nature, even worse,
than the work of the executioner or the spy,
because it is more hypocritical.

112 The Law of Love

Understand then, all of you, especially the
young, that to want to impose an imaginary state
of government on others by violence is not only a
vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Un
derstand that this work, far from assuring the
good of men, is only a lie, a more or less unconscious
hypocricy, and is always hiding the lowest passions.

Understand it, you, men of to-morrow, and stop
looking for an illusionary happiness by participa
ting in the administration of the state, by judicial
institutions, by instruction, by all kinds of parties
who have the good of the masses as an aim. Pay
attention to only one thing, that which you need
the most, that is the most accessible, which gives
the most happiness to us and to every one: the
increase of love in us by the suppression of vices
and passions that keep it from manifesting itself.
Understand that the observance of this supreme
law of love is becoming as inevitable for us as is the
law of flight for the birds, the law of nutrition
by plants for the herbiverous, by meat for the
carniverous; and that consequently, the least
transgression of this law is disastrous to us.

Remember it, consecrate your life to this joyous
work; just begin it, and you will see that it is the
true work in life, and it alone determines the
amelioration of the condition of everybody an
end that you follow blindly by false methods. Do

The Law of Violence 113

not forget that the common bond is in the union of
men, and that this union can never be attained by
means of violence. It is enough that every one
should observe the law of life, and this union will
be realized without the need of seeking for it. This
supreme law, alone, is the same for all of us and
unites us all.

Revealed by Christ, it is recognized to-day by
men, and its observance is obligatory as long as
there is no other law, a still clearer one, conforming
more to the calls of human conscience, revealed
to us.

XIX

Some seek good or happiness in power, others
in science, still others in pleasure. As to those who
really understand what their happiness is, they
know that it need not be possessed by the few,
but by every one; they know that the true good is
the lot of all men at the same time, without divi
sion or jealousy; no one, unless he wishes, can lose
it,

(Pascal. Thoughts of the Wise, xxvii, 4.)

We possess a single infallible guide and this is
the Universal Spirit that lives in men as a whole,
and in each one of us, which makes us aspire to
what we should aspire; it is the spirit that com
mands the tree to grow towards the sun, the
flower to throw off its seed in autumn, us to
reach out towards God, and by so doing become
united to each other.

(Daily Reading, November 16th.)

The true faith attracts people to it, not by the
promise of good to the believer, but by the indica
tion of the only means of saving us from all evil,
and from death itself.

(Daily Reading, September llth.)

114

The Law of Violence

Salvation lies not in the cult, nor in the practice
of a religion, but in the clear comprehension of
the meaning of our life.

(Daily Reading, September llth,)

That is all that I want to say.

I want to say that we are in a situation and in
a period in which we can no longer remain, and
that, willingly or unwillingly, we are obliged to
start out on a new path. And to follow it we do not
have to invent a new religion, or any scientific
theories explaining the meaning of life and serving
as a guide to it; it would be futile, above all, to have
recourse to any special activity; it will be sufficient
to adopt this single rule: free ourselves from the
superstitions of false and static Christianity.

Let each one understand that he has not the right,
or even the possibility, to organize the lives of
others, but that he, in his own life, should act in
conformity with the supreme religious law that has
been revealed to him, and the order of things that
reigns among the so-called Christian nations an
order that makes the whole world suffer, which
answers so little to the demands of our consciences
and which makes humanity unhappier each day
will immediately disappear.

"Whoever you are: sovereign, judge, proprietor,
worker, beggar, reflect and take pity on your soul

116 The Law of Love

No matter how obscured your brain may be by
your authority, your wealth, no matter how badly
treated you may be and how irritated by misery
and humiliations, you possess and you manifest like
all of us, the divine spirit, which asks you clearly
to-day: Why do you martyrize yourself and make
all those about you unhappy? Understand who
you are, just how insignificant and infallible is that
which you call "y u " your spiritual self and
having understood it, commence to live entirely
for the accomplishment of the superior mission of
your life which has been revealed to you by uni
versal wisdom, by the doctrine of Christ, and by
your own conscience.

Put the good of your life in the progressive free
dom of your mind, freedom from all the illusions
of the flesh, and in the improvement of your love
for your fellow man which is, after all, the same
thing. As soon as you will have begun to live thus,
you will be aware of a joyous sensation full of
liberty and happiness. You will be surprised to see
that the same external conditions, with which you
were so concerned, and which were far from real
ization, will not prevent the coming of the greatest
possible happiness.

And if you are unhappy I know that you are
reflect upon what has been proposed to you here,
and which I have not imagined, but is the result of

The Law of Violence 117

the thoughts and feelings of the best minds and
human hearts, and which is the only way to deliver
you from your unhappiness, to acquire the greatest
good that you can get in this life.

That is what I have wanted to say to my brothers
before dying.

APPENDIX I
TO CHAPTER III

The men who, in the opinion of the directing
classes, do the greatest harm to society, are hung,
banished or locked up in prisons; thousands of
other men, less dangerous, are driven away from the
capitals and large cities and wander, hunger stricken
and in rags, across Russia; police agents, in uniform
or in civilian clothes, watch them, spy upon them
and arrest them; books and newspapers, considered
reprehensible, are seized.

While this is taking place there are animated
debates at the Duma as to the best way to assure the
prosperity of a nation, or on the necessity of con
structing a fleet, of using certain systems for or
ganizing the property of the peasants, of levying
or not levying certain taxes. In this Russian parlia
ment everything takes place as it does among other
civilized nations: leaders, lobbyists, quorum,
parties, etc. It would seem as if there were nothing
missing. However, it is precisely among us, in Rus
sia, and at this moment, that the order of existing

118

Appendix I 119

things is approaching nearer and nearer to the
moment of its disappearance.

In fact, let us admit that you, men of the gov
ernment, still shoot five, ten, thirty thousand con
demned people; besides which you are inclined to
follow the example of the governments which
repressed the former European revolutions.

But there are other forces than these forces of
repression; moral forces, the most powerful, much
more powerful than the gallows, guns, prisons,
spies. You are not ignorant of the fact that all those
whom you have strangled or shot have fathers,
brothers, wives, sisters, friends, co-religionists;
and if, by executions, you get rid of those whom
you send to their graves, you arouse not only their
relations, but even among strangers you will make
a much greater number of enemies, who will be
much angrier than were those whom you have
killed. The more pe % ople you cause to disappear, the
less you will get rid of your principal enemy, uni
versal hate. By means of your crimes you only set
loose this hate, and render it more dangerous.

The worst of it is that you arouse sentiments of
cruelty which you believe you can counteract by
executions. You know well that the latter are not
accomplished only with the aid of your writings in
the courts and in the ministries: they are done by
men to other men.

120 Appendix I

A young soldier of the reserve, puzzled, told me
how he was obliged to dig a long trench to bury
ten men condemned to be shot; and how some
soldiers were forced to kill the condemned, while
others were posted behind the assassinating soldiers,
ready to shoot them if they hesitated to carry out
their brutal orders.

Can an act like that take place without leaving
any trace in the human soul, an act commanded by
the very people whom the soldiers are taught to
look upon as estimable and sacred?

I read lately in a newspaper that a wretched
governor general had given to be published an order
of the day in which he complimented two "brave"
policemen because they had shot an unarmed
prisoner who was trying to escape; and as a recom
pense the governor saw that each of the policemen
was paid 25 roubles. Not being able to believe in
such an act of authority, to confirm it I wrote to
the newspaper that published the order of the day.
I received the order itself, and the information that
praise for these murderous acts is habitual,, and is
given by the highest dignatories.

Can these words and acts take place without
leaving any trace of corruption or cruelty upon
those who read these orders of the day, or who
participate in these acts? They cannot help arousing
distrust and disgust for those who order these acts,

Appendix I 121

so against one's conscience, and for those who re
ward the people who execute them. So it is evident
that if thousands of people are suppressed, tens and
hundreds of thousands are depraved by their partic
ipation in these barbarous acts. They lose the re
mainder of their religious and moral scruples and
are prepared by this to commit the same atrocities
to the very men who now force them to violence.

And what do you say of the news spread by the
newspapers among millions of readers giving the
number of those condemned to death and those
executed, news repeated each day, like the necessary
news about the changing of the weather? If the
readers do not ask themselves how the acts of the
authorities can be reconciled with the Scriptures,
or even with the sixth commandment of Moses,
these contradictions can only arouse disdain for
this commandment, for religion in general and for
the authorities, as acts contrary to both religious
law and to conscience.

Is it not clear that these crimes of the authorities,
instead of causing their enemies to disappear, only
increase their number?

It ought to be evident to the directors themselves.

If Marcus Aurelius, in spite of his gentleness and
wisdom, could make war against and execute
people without pangs of conscience, Christians can
no longer do as much without recognizing their

122 Appendix I

criminality. The very fact of imagining peace con
ferences, as hypocritical as they are stupid, and
conditional condemnations, show that the leaders
know perfectly well that what they are doing is
wrong. They can try to persuade themselves and
others that they are acting in virtue of superior
considerations, but they cannot hide from them
selves or from others all the degradation and all
the horror of their activities. Everybody to-day
knows that assassination is a crime, whatever the
motive may be; kings, ministers, generals, know
it just as well.

And it is the same with revolutionaries of all
parties, from the moment that they admit assas
sination as a means to an end. They may say that
they will no longer make use, as they are doing
to-day, of means of violence when the reins of
power are in their hands, but their acts are as im
moral and as cruel as those of governments. That
is why, like governments, they are the cause of the
hatred, bestiality and corruption that are becoming
more and more prevalent among us.

The revolutionaries differ from the present mas
ters because of the fact that the vanity of the
latter's activity is evident, while the activity of the
former, generally theoretical and rarely applied
during revolutions, is less evident. That is why it
seems less criminal.

Appendix I 123

In any case the methods of both are equally
foreign to human nature, and to the principles of
the Christian doctrine. In sowing to the same
degree hatred and madness among men, they both
not only do not attain the end that they follow,
but take us further away from it.

The two opposite camps governors and re
volutionaries as much in Russia as in the rest of
the world, can be compared to people, who, wish
ing to warm themselves better, break up the walls
of their house to make a furnace.

APPENDIX II
TO CHAPTER VII

The Christian doctrine in its true sense, affirming
love to be the supreme law, and not admitting
violence in any case, answers so well to the human
heart, gives such a certainty of liberty, and happi
ness so independent of all desire, that it should have
been accepted, one would think, from the moment
it was known.

In fact, men seek to realize it progressively, in
spite of the efforts that the Church is making to
hide its true sense. Unhappily, when the true sense
of this doctrine began to appear, the greater part
of the Christian world was already so accustomed
to see the truth in the outer forms that it was no
longer possible for it to perceive the exact sense of
the doctrine, or its opposition to the existing state.
That is why those who have more or less understood
the Christian truth should free themselves, not
only from the lying forms of false Christianity,
but also from the belief in the necessity of a social
state founded on the false religion of the Church.

Thus it is that the men of our time, having

124

Appendix II 125

rejected the dogmas, the miracles, and the sanctity
of the Bible, and other articles of faith, are inca
pable of freeing themselves from the false static
doctrine that, thanks to false Christianity, hides
the true doctrine*

On the one hand, the great mass of workers con
tinue to practice the cult by tradition, to believe in
the Church to a certain degree and to believe as
well in a static government founded on the official
religion, so contrary to real Christianity.

On the other hand, the so-called educated classes
have for the most part abandoned this official
religion a long time ago, and consequently do not
believe in Christianity, but continue to believe, as
unconsciously as the people, in the static organiza
tion, which has violence as its principle, and which
was established by the same Church Christianity
in which they no longer believe.

So neither the one nor the other can imagine any
other social organization than the one founded on
violence.

It is really this unconscious faith, this supersti
tion of the Christian world, according to which
violence is the indispensable principle of every social
organization, which constitutes the principle ob
stacle to the Christian doctrine in its real sense.

APPENDIX III
TO CHAPTER VIII

It is sufficient to speak of the principal law of
the Christian doctrine, nonresistance to evil by
violence, for men of the privileged classes, believers
or unbelievers, to smile ironically, as if it were a
question of an absurdity so evident that one cannot
even speak seriously about it.

The greater part of these people consider them
selves moral and educated; they discuss seriously
the question of the Trinity, of the Divinity of
Christ, of the Redemption of the Sacraments, etc.,
or else they converse with you just as seriously as to
which of the two principal political parties has the
greatest chance of success, which grouping of the
state is the most to be desired, what are the most
likely visions of the future state: that of the social
democrats, or of the social revolutionists; but all
are equally convinced that one cannot speak seri
ously of nonresistance to evil.

Why?

Simply because it is impossible for men not to
feel that the admission of nonresistance to evil

126

Appendix III 127

ruins their lives as they now are, and exacts of them
something new, unknown, which terrifies them.

That is why the questions about the Trinity, the
Immaculate Conception, the Communion, etc. are
capable of occupying serious people, while un
believers can find amusement by discussing ques
tions of syndicates, parties, socialism, communism,
while nonresistance to evil seems an insane idea;
and the more senseless it seems to them the higher
their position.

In the same way the force of the denial of the
doctrine of nonresistance is in proportion to the
degree of the power, wealth and civilization of men.

Those who occupy powerful positions, the very
rich, and those who, like the learned, justify the
position of these people, simply shrug their shoul
ders at every allusion to the law of nonresistance.
Men less important, or less rich, or less clever,
despise it equally. But all those whose lives are
founded on violence judge with more or less disgust
the possibility of the application of the law of non-
resistance.

So it is certain that if the admission of the
Christian doctrine in its real sense depended upon
people who enjoy privileged positions, the passing
of the state founded on violence to the one having
love for its principle would be nearer than it is
to-day, above all in Russia, where more than two

128 Appendix III

thirds of the population are not yet depraved by
wealth, power, or by civilization.

As the majority of the Russian people have no
motive and no advantage in depriving themselves
of lives where love reigns, it must surely be they
who will take initiative in replacing the present
state by a new one that one's conscience, already
clear on the subject, indicates.

APPENDIX IV
TO CHAPTER XVII

Finding strange the blindness of the men who
believe in the necessity for violence, and convinced
as I am of the contrary, it is not arguments, how
ever, that can persuade me and convince others of
the truth; what determines my belief is the cer
tainty of the spiritual nature of man, of which love
is the manifestation. But real love, revealed to us by
Christ, excludes the possibility of all violence.

I do know, and no one can know, if the use
of violence or resignation when threatened with
evil is useful or useless, harmful or harmless; what
I know, and what every one knows, is that love is
good; it is good when men feel affection for me; it
is much better if I feel affection for men; in fact,
the greatest good of all is my affection for all, not
only for those who love me, but, as Christ said,
for those who hate me, who injure me.

Strange as it may be to any one who has not felt
this, it is nevertheless true; and the more I ponder
on it, the more surprised I am not to have felt it
sooner.

129

130 Appendix IV

The real love, which denies self and identifies its
"ego" with another is synonymous with the awak
ening in the soul of the superior, universal principle
of life. This love is the true, and gives all the good
that it can give when it is only love that is to
say, free of any personal interest. And it is this
kind of love that must be felt for the enemy or the
offender.

That is why the recommendation to love not
those who love you, but those who hate you is no
exaggeration; it simply indicates the impossibility
of any exception, and the possibility of gaining the
highest good that love can give.

The fact that it should be so is self-evident; but
one must feel it to be convinced. As soon as one has
felt it, offenses and attacks become desirable.

It follows that the human squl suffers when one
opposes evil to evil, and on the other hand, feels
the greatest happiness in returning good for evil.

1 08 279